


An Imprecise Science

by gremlins-came-and-got-me (Scared_Beings_in_the_Dark)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Hales, Alpha Derek, Graphic descriptions of violence, M/M, Major Character Death of Bad Characters, Spark Stiles, Sterek ReverseBang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-02
Updated: 2017-06-02
Packaged: 2018-11-08 00:01:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11069838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scared_Beings_in_the_Dark/pseuds/gremlins-came-and-got-me
Summary: After a mishap with his magic, Stiles has to replace the mirror in his bathroom. Little does he know that it is an enchanted mirror that leads to a horrible world where supernaturals are fought in an underground gambling ring. His first clue? The glowing red eyes in the mirror.





	An Imprecise Science

**Author's Note:**

> **Thanks to:** [Pencil Trash](http://penciltrash.tumblr.com/) for the beautiful [art](http://penciltrash.tumblr.com/post/161354745926/heres-my-entry-for-sterekreversebang-yay-please) that inspired this piece, the Sterek ReverseBang mods for setting this up and running it: I really enjoyed participating. And a big thank you to my beta, TLM, who (although she knows nothing about Teen Wolf) offered to read this story and provide feedback.  
>  **Disclaimer:** I own nothing.  
>  Check end notes for warnings.

~ * ~

Stiles shuffles into the bathroom, wiping at his crusty eyes. He yawns, stretching and shaking his head side to side, trying to wake up. No matter what he does, it isn’t working.

He frowns down at his hands, wondering at the new scrapes running across them. It feels like he went rock climbing in his sleep.

He sighs and shakes it off. He hasn’t sleepwalked in years.

Stiles grabs his toothbrush and liberally covers the head with paste. He sticks it in his mouth and perfunctorily scrubs at his teeth while he takes a leak and starts the shower. Steam rises quickly, and he grins sleepily as he breathes in the warm, damp air.

He spits the paste into the sink and washes his hands, glancing up at the already-foggy mirror. Red eyes glow out at him and he stumbles back.

He recalls dreaming about those eyes, some long time ago. Right before his spark became latent, actually. He wonders if they’re connected, and then dismisses the idea immediately.

Stiles is in training to control his spark, but sometimes he has less concentration than his instructor would like. He thinks this is one of those times, as he notices his fingers pulse with a steady purple light as he reaches out to clear the moisture from the mirror.

The red eyes recoil and fade away almost immediately, and Stiles freezes.

When he can unstick and move around again, the shower’s gone cold and the mirror is empty. Absolutely empty. Not even Stiles’ reflection is there.

“What the hell?” he whispers, fingers extended toward it again. Before he can make contact, the room explodes into bright white light and a shockwave passes through him.

~ * ~

When Stiles wakes up, it’s to his dad and his best friend sitting on the edge of the bathtub. Someone, probably Scott, covered him with a towel.

“What happened?” he asks, voice cracking.

Dad stands up with a groan. “You fainted,” he says, gruffly.

“Did not.”

Scott helps Stiles sit up. “You did something,” he says. “Do you remember what happened?”

Stiles stares at him incredulously. “Would I have asked if I did?”

“Well, why exactly are you on the floor?” Scott asks.

Stiles lets his head loll back and stares up at the ceiling wondering when he got that cobweb hanging from the light fixture. Wouldn’t it be too hot for the poor arachnid?

He rolls his shoulders and then lunges upright, startling his father into taking a step back and Scott to lower to his haunches growling subvocally at him. At least, that’s what Stiles assumes the bared teeth and sudden sideburns mean.

He ignores them and turns to face the mirror. Disappointingly, it’s blank. Well. It’s actually back to being a mirror. He can see his dad eyeing him with a worried expression and Scott standing up, human again.

He reaches out to touch it, pausing as he feels the building of a static shock.

“I think the mirror is enchanted,” he says. “I found a rune earlier.”

Scott and Dad exchange a look. “Does it have anything to do with why we found you on the floor?” Dad asks.

Stiles shrugs. “Probably.” He doesn’t mention the eyes, unsure if they would believe it. For some reason, it’s perfectly okay to have a werewolf running around but as soon as sparks and magic come up in conversation, Stiles is the crazy one.

“I still need to get ready,” he reminds his audience. “I have that interview at _Shapers_.” Yes, Stiles is going to be a health instructor. Apparently, he is superb with telling people how to make their butts smaller.

He really doesn’t want this job, but he needs to pay for his magical supplies somehow.

“Right, of course,” Dad says, ushering Scott toward the door. “We won’t keep you any longer. Call me when you can. Don’t faint again. Also, call Lydia. I heard she’s taken up exorcisms now.”

Stiles reins in his snort. Banish one annoying dead relative who won’t let you finish calculating the latest mathematical theorem in your thesis and suddenly you’re an expert on exorcism. Never mind that she had to give Stiles the ‘translated’ information so he could be the one to actually perform the ritual.

Although, she is…something. Even Deaton, Stiles’ instructor in his spark training, and Scott’s boss, has no clue as to what her abilities are, just that they are present but dormant.

“I won’t touch the mirror again if that’s what you’re worried about,” he says.

“We believe you,” Dad says.

His tone implies, heavily, that he doesn’t in fact believe that Stiles can refrain from touching the mirror, but he still leaves, taking Scott with him.

Once the door shuts, Stiles turns on the shower again. The water is still cold, and he ducks in and out quickly, barely taking the time to scrub with his body wash.

The mirror isn’t even fogged over when he shuts off the water and wraps a towel around his waist. He leans over the sink, staring into the depths of the mirror. But, it’s just a mirror. No red eyes.

He sighs.

He’ll look at it later. Right now, he’s late for his interview.

~ * ~

Derek wakes up cold and alone.

He’s always cold but not always alone.

He is curled in the corner, tucked behind the ash line. Above him, the single lamp buzzes incessantly, like an angry wasp waiting to sting him. It sets his teeth on edge, and he lets his fangs grow until they poke from his mouth.

Derek doesn’t know where he is or how long he’s been here. His captors refuse to tell him anything useful.

They have him on a schedule where they feed him every two days and drag him to the arena on the fifth day.

The only respite he gets is here in the ash line. Behind him, carved into the wall, are the runes. Occasionally, the empty space fills with a surface that reminds him greatly of a mirror. Through it he can see a young man, maybe a few years younger than himself moving to and fro in his bathroom. He’s usually in some state of undress, with his tattoos, large wings spanning his back, and a series of clunky rings wrapped around his upper arm, visible as he turns on his shower or brushes his teeth.

Derek misses running water.

The young man doesn’t seem able to see him, and Derek feels safe watching him. When the steam from the shower fills the room, he switches to his alpha eyes just so he can keep watching.

This last time, though, the man had seemed to see him. It made Derek’s chest freeze, especially when his fingers glowed purple.

Apprentice magic. More dangerous than a fully capable spark only because it was so unpredictable.

Derek had pulled back, frantically scraping at one of the runes etched into the stone. When the flash of white light burst through the portal, leaving the young man unconscious, he had felt guilty.

Now, he is waiting for the portal to activate to see if the young man is all right. Derek doesn’t know if he could quell his conscience if it turns out the man has been harmed—more harmed.

The gate clanks open, drawing his attention from the empty portal.

“Up, boy,” the man snarls. Kind words are not something Derek hears often. “Medical time.”

Derek rolls his shoulders, crossing his hands behind his back and turning to face the wall while the man approaches and deftly straps the wolfsbane-infused leather cuffs around his wrists.

He used to fight, but a dozen or so broken bones and some shock-batons had convinced him it’s better to play along and save his energy.

Once he is secured, the man jerks him around and marches him to the single piece of solid mountain ash in the barrier line. With a careless kick, he knocks it aside and drags Derek by the shoulder through the narrow opening. The outer gate shuts behind them. Derek worries that the portal will activate again without him there to witness it.

He tries to keep track of the winding corridors, but once they pass the hallway that branches off to the arena, he loses count. He doesn’t think he’s been this far before, or if he has, he definitely wasn’t conscious.

An hour of walking leads them to a set of double doors with a hand-painted sign declaring this to be Medical.

The man shoves Derek through the doors, propelling him forward with his unwavering grip on his shoulder.

Medical is a vast room that Derek thinks once was a storage facility. There are a couple of folding tables and chairs stained with blood along the far wall, a couple of chairs by the doors here, and a counter of sorts with a medium-sized oak desk midway between. He wrinkles his nose at the stench of death and antibiotics clinging to every surface. He knows he has been here a time or two after his matches, but he’s done well to avoid this place.

Doc is waiting by the medicine cupboard, looking bored as she makes marks on her clipboard. Derek hates Doc.

Doc used to be an emissary, but now she’s the on-call doctor for the supernatural creatures injured in the arena. She also used to be pretty but an accident with her alpha led to her face nearly being ripped off. It doesn’t sit quite right, and the wrong light makes it appear as if she’s something not remotely human.

She is arrogant and often refers to the supernaturals as ‘animals.’ Whenever the psych evaluator, a thin, dark-skinned woman who insists on being called Dr. Morrell, caught her saying that, she would admonish, “Now, Jennifer, we’re all people here.”

“Ah, Hale,” Doc says, simpering, as much as she can with her damaged vocal chords, “ready for your shots?”

Shots? Derek raises an eyebrow at her. What shots?

Doc smiles coldly at him. “Lay him on the table, make sure he can’t move,” she says to the man still holding Derek’s shoulder.

“Wait, what are you going to do to me?” Derek struggles weakly, but the wolfsbane has spent too long on his wrists. Usually he doesn’t have to wear it for more than a half an hour, the time it takes to go to and from the arena and his cell. The poison has seeped in and it’s sapping his strength.

The man hefts him easily onto the nearest folding table and Derek recoils at the cold, congealed mess of tacky blood sticking to his front. He pants heavily, working through a sudden onslaught of nausea. Behind him, he can hear Doc unlock the cabinet, rattling the glass bottles until she finds what she’s looking for.

Derek inhales sharply. “What are you doing to me?” he growls, letting his eyes burn red. He snaps completely human teeth onto the man’s arm, biting deep and shifting so his fangs grow into the flesh. The man howls in pain, ripping free from Derek’s mouth. Blood, fresh and warm, drips from the wound. Derek grins before the man’s hand smashes against his face.

“Don’t hurt him, Ennis,” Doc snaps. Derek startles at her voice. She’s right next to him now. “Shh, little one, this will only hurt for a moment.”

He thrashes against the steady pain of something digging into the triskelion tattoo between his shoulder blades.

White hot pain bursts into him as Doc pulls back. He can feel the fire racing through his veins and it makes him want to curl up and whine, seeking comfort. But, he’s alone here. None of the creatures are allowed to speak with one another. The closest they come is when they say a ritual-prayer for the dead over their fallen bodies. Although, since the people in charge haven’t bothered to soundproof the cells, the prisoners are able to pass along some information simply by speaking out loud.

“There,” Doc says, distantly. Derek can barely hear anything over the roaring in his ears. “You can fight him again in two days. Give it time to settle, make him more interesting.” The man grunts. “You should get that looked at. The mouth is a nasty place, more so when you don’t have access to toothpaste.”

Derek lets her insipid voice patter on and on as he struggles to rein in his body’s reaction to the pain.

“Okay, one more thing,” Doc says, suddenly by his ear. She stabs a hypodermic into his neck and depresses the plunger. Whatever it is, it’s fast acting. He has enough time to draw in a sharp breath before he passes out.

~ * ~

Stiles doesn’t immediately fist pump the air, but it’s a near thing, and the only reason he doesn’t is because after the interviewer, a man by the name of Bobby Finstock Stiles swears was a coach in a past life, shakes his hand, he eyes him and mutters, “Don’t pull a Greenberg on me.”

What the hell is a Greenberg? Stiles wonders silently. Finstock isn’t more forthcoming.

“You start tomorrow. In the spin class. Wear something flattering.” Stiles glances down at his button down shirt and almost-slacks. Yes, he’s wearing his Converse, but he thinks he cleaned up nicely.

“I mean,” Finstock elaborates, “something that makes your ass look great. We get a lot of women who appreciate the view.”

Again, Stiles glances down his body. “Are you sure you want to hire me?” he asks.

Finstock follows the same path, then he makes a spin-around motion with his fingers. Stiles obliges. “Yeah, you’ll do.”

Stiles feels objectified and slightly horrified at the idea of a group of women following his instructions because of his ass. It’s not that great of an ass anyway.

“Remember, don’t be late!” Finstock calls after him. “They’re sharks! If they sense your fear, you’re done for!”

Stiles waves him away and heads for his battered Jeep parked in the farthest parking spot. He can’t wait to get in on the employee parking since this gym’s lot is always packed. It feels like actually being an adult.

So does calling Scott as soon as he hauls himself into the driver’s seat.

Scott answers with a clipped, “Busy, Stiles. Talk fast.”

That just means he’s washing dogs for Deaton again. Boring.

“Hey, so I got the job. I start tomorrow!”

“That’s cool, did you want to celebrate?”

It’s the middle of the week, even if Stiles liked going out and getting drunk, he’s positive that would just be rude to do with both of them having work tomorrow. “Maybe this weekend?” he says. “Or maybe when I get paid.”

Scott huffs in what’s either relief or anger. Stiles is going with relief.

“That’s cool too, man,” Scott says, muttering in the same breath, _“Hold still, you little shit.”_

Or apparently anger.

“I’ll let you get back to that,” Stiles says, magnanimously.

“Yeah okay. See you Saturday.” Scott hangs up.

It is surprisingly disappointing to drive home and realize that he is well and truly an adult and will no longer be able to do what he wants when he wants.

At least he still has the mystery of the mirror to unfold.

Stiles throws his keys on the counter in the kitchen, snatching an apple from the bowl his dad gave him as a housewarming gift (and that Scott’s mom put the apples into), biting into it as he heads to his bedroom where he keeps his magic books.

Well, they’re not magic books really, and Deaton would have his hide if he heard them referred to as that, but they help teach Stiles what he needs to know.

And since what he needs to know is magic, they are magic books.

Ugh. This apple is disgusting. Stiles opens a window and chucks the mostly uneaten thing out of his home. He waves his fingers, drawing up a single stream of energy on his finger that he then shoots at the apple. Almost immediately, it sprouts a tiny stem and unfurls a miniature white flower.

Stiles shuts the window and turns to his Book of Shadows. He ducks instinctively, but Deaton isn’t here to smack him for ‘disrespecting’ the manuals.

In the grimoire, which is the closest he’s come to actually calling the book what it is, he searches the index for ‘glowing red-eyed beasts.’

Turns out there’s a lot of those floating around, not limited to kelpies (which Stiles dismisses—he lives nowhere near a stagnant pond), saltwater mermaids (again, no suitable body of liquid nearby), freshwater mermaids (ditto), and alpha werewolves.

Stiles pauses on the page, studying the hand-drawn picture of the werewolf’s face. The shape could be almost right if the eyes were less angled. More like a human’s gone red instead of an animal. Which would make sense if the alpha wasn’t shifted into its full form.

He taps the drawing, thinking. The glowing red eyes. In the mirror. The mirror.

The mirror is the key, he’s positive. The light that knocked him out (he refuses to believe he fainted—not without some help) came from the mirror when he was about to touch it.

What if the alpha on the other side panicked and did something, activated a defense mechanism?

Stiles needs a protection spell so that he can approach the mirror without the skittish alpha blasting him into the land of the unconscious again.

Oh, Deaton would be so proud if he could see Stiles now, flipping through book after book, taking down notes.

He’s always getting on Stiles’ case about proper magical procedure.

It takes nearly thirty minutes to find everything Stiles needs for his protection spell. He’s a little worried because the rosemary was supposed to be fresh and all he has is dried. He adds some thyme to balance it, hoping it does just that and not something else. Magic is an imprecise science and a lot of hoping.

Stiles mixes everything together, eyes shut tight as he chants what he calls his hope-prayer. Really, it’s just the words ‘I believe’ over and over again until they sound less like real words and more like the mystical imbuement they are supposed to be.

As soon as the materials are done dry-simmering, that is, bubbling despite the fact that he applied neither liquid nor heat, Stiles scoops the grimy paste onto his hands and draws it up over his body. He can feel the tattoos on his back flaring as the protection spell settles over his shoulders. He grins. Deaton had sighed and revealed that he himself has a tiny row of runes tattooed across his left hip when Stiles asked him why sparks and emissaries and druids and (“All magical beings, Stiles.”) didn’t just do this very thing instead of relying on a frankly unreliable source of power.

Stiles’ wings hold the entirety of the known amplification and protection spells from Deaton’s office, all expertly woven into the lines of his tattoos. But, without the right spark, cultured by the right materials (the herbs and minerals used in potions), the runes are useless. They can’t activate properly and certainly won’t provide the protection that Stiles knows he needs if he’s facing off against an alpha werewolf.

The tingling of the paste doesn’t abate, and Stiles figures that means it’s working like it’s supposed to. Happy, and apprehensive, he heads to the bathroom, detouring to his kitchen to grab the aluminum bat he keeps as a burglar deterrent.

He feels like James Bond, sneaking into his own bathroom, bat held high. Purple lightning crackles over his skin, discharging as he moves. His magic is suitably riled up.

The light switch sticks when he flips it up, and he loses precious advantage by slamming it up with one of the lightning strikes.

When he turns to the mirror, he finds it clear, inactive. No alpha.

Stiles narrows his eyes at it. His reflection narrows its eyes back at him. Stiles grins and his reflection grins too.

Just a mirror. Just Stiles’ bathroom.

He can’t help the disappointment he feels when he steps closer and the mirror still only shows him what’s in his bathroom.

Maybe, if he...touches the mirror? After all, that’s what he was going to do when the mirror knocked him out last time.

Stiles shrugs, meeting his reflection’s eyes. Worth a shot.

He rubs his hands together, whispering, “I believe,” as he pulls on his spark until his hands glow dark purple, almost dark blue.

He uses one cautious finger to trace the raised edge of the mirror. He can feel script running beneath his finger, the letters, runes maybe, catching as he moves downward.

When he reaches the bottom, he leans closer, studying where his finger rests. It is runes he sees but he doesn’t recognize any of them offhand. Stiles wonders if Deaton would know what they mean if he shows them to him.

As he turns to find something to take a picture of the mirror, he notices a pair of red eyes glaring out at him from the mirror.

Stiles recoils, hands flying up to a defensive position as he studies the shadowy figure in the mirror.

“What are you?” he asks, forcing bravado he definitely doesn’t feel into his voice. He thinks he does a good job of it.

“What am I?” a voice repeats. “What are you? Human or more?”

“I’m a spark,” Stiles says.

The eyes bob, like the head they’re in is nodding. “I’m a werewolf.”

Cool, so Stiles was right. Awesome.

“Figured,” Stiles says nonchalantly. He peers closer at the mirror and the eyes follow him. “So, any idea how you got in my mirror?” he asks.

“I’m not in any mirror,” the werewolf says, puzzled. “I’m stuck in a mountain ash cell. This is a portal, activated by runes carved into the wall.”

“Well, I can’t see,” Stiles says. “It’s all kind of cloudy, like you’re standing in a room filled with mist.”

The eyes blink and then disappear. Stiles shouts in anger before he realizes that the other side of his mirror is clearing, and he can clearly see a shadowy figure shifting from foot to foot. As the mist dissipates, he recoils at the person staring out at him. The first thing he notices is that the person, a man, which he guessed from the cadence of the voice, is naked. Absolutely not a stitch of clothing upon his body.

“Um,” Stiles says, intelligently. The man scowls at him, thick brows low over his glowing red eyes.

“You’re staring,” he says shortly.

“Yeah, sorry about that. Any reason you’re, uh, nude?”

The man glares down at his chest. “It’s easier to control us if we don’t have clothing. I think it’s a way to humiliate us. Which is stupid because they already make us fight each other for their entertainment.”

“What? So, like an underground fighting ring?” Stiles wonders if he can set his dad on it. Once he’s got him acclimated to the fact that Stiles found out about this because of his magic mirror. Yeah, Dad’s really going to enjoy wrapping his head around that.

“I suppose that’s what it’s like,” the man says. “We’re supposed to fight to the death, but we can get away with injuring our opponents enough to send them to Medical.”

“Is that what you do?” There is a mournful edge in the man’s voice. Stiles is positive he doesn’t kill his opponents. “Do you send a lot of people to Medical?”

“It’s better than saying a prayer for the dead and hoping they aren’t just dumped in a pile to rot,” the man retorts sharply. “It’s better to go a week or two without facing someone and then see them again as they win their next fight the way you taught them to survive.” Quieter, he says, “It’s easier to sleep knowing you haven’t killed another innocent.”

“Tell me your name,” Stiles says. The man frowns at him. “Please?” he says to the man’s brows. “I am a spark. I can help you get out of there.”

“I’ll only tell you my name if you tell me yours,” the man says.

“Deal. Stiles.”

“Derek. Hale. Of California.”

“Stiles Stilinski, also of California.”

“My pack,” Derek says, “we live up by Beacon Hills. We protect the woods from other threats. Can you find them? Please? Tell them I’m okay?”

“Beacon Hills, huh?” Stiles taps his lips. “Yeah. Are you sure you’re from Beacon Hills ‘cause I gotta tell you, I live in Beacon Hills and I’ve never heard of the Hales.”

“Why would you? We are reclusive. We keep to ourselves.”

“Then how am I supposed to find you?”

“I don’t know. You’re a spark. Use magic.”

Derek freezes, cocking his head. His eyes flicker, and the alpha red fades. He hunches his shoulders, making himself smaller. Less intimidating, Stiles realizes. Before he can ask what’s wrong, Derek slaps a hand on what must be the disengage rune for the mirror. Only, instead of turning off, the entire surface shimmers brightly with energy.

Stiles steps back in time to avoid a ball of pure energy burning his face off. His shower curtain isn’t so lucky.

“Whoa,” he breathes, examining the damage. No doubt about it: if he hadn’t moved, he wouldn’t have a face anymore.

Well, now he has a bone to pick with the werewolf, which ensures that he’ll contact him again, once he figures out how to activate his side of the, what had Derek called it? Oh yeah, the portal.

He is curious, though, about Derek’s pack. Why haven’t they reached out, trying to find him? And why hasn’t he ever heard of the Hale pack anyway?

Stiles looks down at his hand, at the magic flowing over it in response to the mirror’s defense mechanism.

“Magic,” he whispers, contemplative, sending a tendril of magic up to the ceiling. _“Magic.”_

~ * ~

Shortly after he turns off the portal, the outer door swings open and the guard, Ennis, enters. His arm is in a sling, and Derek preens internally at the visible damage.

“Position.”

“Didn’t Doc say you can’t fight me for a couple days?” Derek reminds him.

Ennis smirks. “That’s not what I heard,” he says. “Boss wants to see that his money is well spent. Position.”

Derek turns around and places one hand in the other behind his back. The wolfsbane cuffs snap into place and then he’s spun around and frog-marched toward the arena.

Worryingly, everything feels numb. His ears ring with silence even though he knows he should be able to hear both Ennis’ and his own heartbeats. He can’t even hear the buzzing of the arena before they round the final turn.

“If you lose, you’d better not wake up,” Ennis says right before he removes the cuffs, throws open the fighter’s entrance, and heaves Derek through onto the sand.

Now, inside, Derek can hear the hum of the crowd. His opponent isn’t in the arena yet, so he takes a moment to orient himself. The judges’ box is filled. He sees Doc in the corner, holding a white handkerchief. She usually drops it when an opponent has been declared winner as a signal to stop the fight and let her tend to the injured or dead party.

Next to her is the head boss, a man named Deucalion. Rumor in the cells is that he was once a wolf that was ‘cured.’ Derek doesn’t believe those rumors. For one, no one who ever was once a wolf has become a non-wolf. And two, a wolf would not betray his own species in this manner by participating in something so distasteful as the enslavement of other supernatural creatures, much less to force them to fight themselves.

Derek doesn’t recognize the other six people in the judges’ box, but the person sitting immediately to the right of the last judge is a woman Derek never thought he would see again.

Her blonde hair looks almost black in the darkened shadows, and if he could pick out her eyes, he’s positive they would be black too instead of the warm brown they appeared to be.

Kate Argent.

The reason he’s here.

He had stumbled across her in his woods, lost and alone and scared. And he had helped her. He’d carried her when her ankle turned out to be broken.

And how had she repaid his kindness? By injecting him with wolfsbane and dragging him here.

The noise of the crowd swells for a moment, and Derek snaps his attention onto the other fighter’s entrance.

Even with his affected eyes, he can see the outline of a fox with just one tail, electricity curving around her body, one hand raised to block the brightening overhead lights from her orange eyes.

Derek’s limbs are still tired, weighted by the unknown substance. Even so, he is an alpha werewolf facing off against an untrained kitsune—this is a fight he shouldn’t be able to lose, but…

He thinks he recognizes the kitsune from a previous fight. She was wild then and could not aim her foxfire.

He spared her life then. He can only hope she offers him the same courtesy.

They circle each other warily, Derek looking for any weakness left while the kitsune studies him.

She makes the first lunge, and he barely steps out of the way, her hand slamming into the sand where he stood barely a second before. He takes another step back and draws out a single claw that he then flicks over her cheek, skirting her eye, showing her how easily he could have blinded her but didn’t.

Instead of serving as a warning, as a gesture of goodwill, it only seems to enrage her, and electricity crackles in her hand.

They spar heavily for a few minutes, and by the time she retreats to her designated corner to lick her wounds—a single slice over her upper arm inflicted when she reached for his throat—Derek is winded and he knows that he cannot go on much longer.

The substance has taken his energy and the more adrenaline his body produces, the heavier his limbs seem. Conversely, the more adrenaline he has, the better his hearing and sight become. He can feel his strength tingling in his hands, in his calves, but he cannot access it.

The kitsune is ready before he is. She charges at him with a battle cry more fitting as a cry of shock than that of attack.

Still, Derek straightens as best he can. If he is to die today, it will be with dignity—not cowering. He flashes his eyes at her and her hand stays.

“Alpha?” she asks softly, fist mere millimeters from his brow.

Over the growing noise of the crowd, Derek can hear her heart pounding. He wonders if the substance is wearing off finally. Probably just another spike of adrenaline.

“Alpha?” she asks again, and Derek nods. Next he knows, he has his arms full of a sobbing kitsune. He’s glad that she hasn’t fought as many times as he has, as her clothes are still intact while his fell apart weeks ago. They aren’t allowed replacements; it’s considered an extraneous cost and deemed unnecessary for the ‘creatures.’ Also, like he told Stiles, it’s just plain humiliating to be naked while everyone else in power is clothed. He pats awkwardly at her back, murmuring softly into her hair, like he did when he used to comfort his younger sister. It seems to help some.

The kitsune pulls back and gives him a watery smile. “Alpha, I’m Kira Yukimura from New York.”

“Kira Yukimura from New York,” Derek replies. “I am Derek Hale from California.”

“California?” Kira says excitedly. “My family was moving to California so that my mother could reconnect with an old friend. We were supposed to check in with the local werewolf pack as well, but I don’t think it was the Hale pack.”

“Probably not. There’s at least six packs in Northern California and I don’t know how many others farther south.”

The jeers of the crowd suddenly crest, and Derek wonders what the judges are planning. He and Kira are definitely off script right now. Over Kira’s shoulder, he can see the arena officials conversing amongst themselves, shock batons held at the ready, wolfsbane-loaded guns in hand.

He knows the crowd wants to see death—that they have in fact paid a hefty sum for this outcome—and he worries that if he lets the officials approach, he or Kira could die.

A plan. He needs a plan.

What if they continue their fight? Derek is still affected by the substance. Obviously, he is to lose. But, if he can get Kira to at least knock him out, then he’ll go to Medical and she will be taken back to her cell, and they will both live.

“Kira,” he says, low so even she has to strain her kitsune ears to hear. “Kira, shock me right at the base of my skull. It’ll act like a Taser and knock me out.” It will also stop his breathing temporarily, which will better help him to play ‘dead.’

“What if I kill you?” Kira starts tearing up, and her breathing increases exponentially. Derek realizes that he can hear her heartbeat racing even over all the other noise. His adrenaline levels must be spiking again.

“You won’t,” he assures her. “Just don’t think about it.”

“Oh, God, now all I can think about is—”

“Kira! Just do it!”

“Okay. Um. Okay.” The ball of electricity Kira coaxes from the air is lackluster, but it’ll have to do. Derek pivots and throws himself backward so Kira has no choice but to catch him with her hand pressed against where his neck meets his head.

The electricity lodges against his skin, zapping him over and over again. Derek falls to his knees, groaning in pain as the power in the shocks grows. Kira is holding his neck still and pumping more energy into her electricity ball.

Good God, she really will kill him!

He starts struggling, jerking against her, trying to loosen her grip on him, but his muscles spasm, contracting as thousands of volts pour through his body.

Even as he weakens from the electricity, he can feel his werewolf strength and senses returning. The electricity must be combating the substance Doc injected.

“I’m sorry,” he hears Kira whisper. He can smell the salt in her tears as they drip from her face. “I’m so sorry.”

The surge of energy she sends through him is enough to knock him sideways, and he falls to the sand unable to catch himself. Two feet step into his line of vision, but Derek loses full consciousness before he can focus on more than neon pink shoelaces and fluorescent green soles. Deucalion.

~ * ~

It’s easy enough to find the Hales after all. No magic required—aside from a quick reapplication of the protection spell.

Turns out, the Hales live about a billion miles into the preserve that surrounds Beacon Hills.

Really, Stiles just asks his dad about them (and why he never heard of them. His dad’s response of “I don’t know, Stiles. They keep to themselves,” is unacceptable. Stiles knows everybody in this town and he’s only been here since eighth grade), and his dad points him at the singular access road going off into the preserve, usually barricaded with a sign declaring ‘No Entry After Dark’. The Hales live in a giant house at the end of the lane.

Stiles regrets not asking his dad or Scott to accompany him. Hell, he’d even settle for Lydia for all that she’s something.

When he parks in front of the ginormous house (okay, so it’s not really _that_ huge. It just looks impressive with its façade and porch and a balcony on the second level), there is a line of eight people standing on the porch. Six women and two men.

The youngest person looks like she’s in high school while the oldest looks like a well-aged mother.

Everyone resembles each other and Derek strongly enough that Stiles is confident that they are all related. Derek is a werewolf, so they must be too, if they’re all family. (Although, he knows, that means nothing. He knows of werewolves that were born with human siblings and others that only became werewolves because of being bitten—Scott comes to mind.)

Stiles shuts off his engine. Bad idea. He should have left it idling in case he needs to make a quick getaway. These are werewolves, after all. It’s too conspicuous to crank on his engine now, so he pockets the keys (another bad idea) and steps out, slamming the door behind him (God, Stiles, stop making bad decisions!).

“What are you doing here?” one of the women, the one with the bushiest eyebrows and a slight sneer, demands. She reminds Stiles the most of Derek. “This is private property.”

The slightly older woman with not so thick brows behind her grins menacingly.

Stiles takes in a sharp breath. He calls up a tendril of magic, making sure it’s so purple it might as well be from a can of paint, not naturally occurring in nature (except, obviously on his hand). He offers this to the heavy-browed woman.

“I am a spark,” he says.

“No shit,” the menacing woman says. Stiles frowns at her. “What does a spark want with us?”

“I want to talk about Derek Hale.”

The reactions are...not quite what Stiles expected. Immediately, he’s surrounded by the group and the youngest grabs his hand to inspect his magic.

“You know where Derek is?” the oldest woman asks. Her voice is shaky, like she’s used to being strong, but can’t be right now. Stiles almost feels sorry for her.

“I know how to contact him,” he says. Stiles is worried because it does not appear that his protection spell is working in the slightest.

“And how would an _apprentice_ ,” the younger of the two men spits, “know how to contact our Derek?”

His eyes, icy blue, bore into Stiles’ until, uncomfortable, Stiles looks away.

“Peter,” the oldest woman says, warningly. Obediently, the man steps back. “I am sorry, we are not being very hospitable. Please, join us inside. We will answer any questions we can, but we do require information in exchange.”

“Of course,” Stiles murmurs. As one, the group troops back to the porch where they file through the door and into the building. Stiles whispers a quick incantation, feeling the magic flare in his protection spell. So it is still active. Why wasn’t it triggered when the girl grabbed his hand?

Stiles walks up the steps slowly. He feels almost as if he is going to his death. The oldest woman smiles as he passes her on his way in. Somehow, he finds the courage to return the smile.

“I am Talia,” she says.

“Stiles Stilinski,” he offers.

“Ah, the sheriff’s son. We’ve heard much about you.”

Stiles laughs nervously. “I cannot say the same about you.”

Talia smiles again, but this time, Stiles sees the sadness in it. “That would be because the world is not ready for packs of werewolves, much less ones that are family. As much as Beacon Hills is progressive, they frown upon conglomerations of supernatural creatures.

“It’s all fine to have a banshee who is studying pre-law or to have a werewolf at the veterinary clinic, but once you’ve got a werewolf in the library related to the werewolf on city council and the werewolf who runs his own garage that employs a few other related werewolves,  people start becoming nervous that werewolves are out to get them.”

“No matter if they were there first?” Stiles asks.

Talia gives him that same sad smile. “Especially if they were there first.”

“Honestly, that sucks.” It hasn’t escaped Stiles’ notice that she mentioned Scott and Lydia (so she’s a banshee-something. Cool) as examples.

Talia leads Stiles into a second room where the men are sitting on a settee while the women sit around a short table. Someone has produced a pack of cards, and the heavy-brows woman is dealing them out one at a time.

“This is my husband, James,” Talia points to the older man. He waves. “My brother, Peter.” Peter snorts derisively. Stiles resist the urge to thumb his nose at him. “My youngest child, Cora.” Heavy-brows throws a card with extra force at the table. The three of diamonds. “My oldest child, Laura.” The menacing woman grins with sharp teeth. “My niece, Malia. Her mother Ivy. My sister-in-law, Emily.”

Stiles nods politely at all the people. He recognizes Emily from the library, and he thinks he saw James at the place he takes his Jeep in for servicing.

“And how does Derek fit in?” Stiles asks.

“He’s my brother,” Cora says. She holds up another card. The seven of hearts. “He’s also the alpha.”

“That I knew,” Stiles says. “His eyes are very distinct.”

“Again,” Peter speaks loudly, “why does a mere spark, an apprentice barely in control of his magic, know where our alpha is when even we cannot sense him?”

“Because he’s in an alternate dimension,” Stiles says.

“No such thing,” Laura says. “Try again, spark.”

“Derek sent me to find you, to make sure you were okay. Shall I tell him that or should I tell you how to find him?”

“You would bargain with our alpha so flippantly?” Peter sneers. “A spark like you should not be allowed to run free.” He lunges across the room, almost faster than Stiles can track. One clawed hand swings down toward his head, and Stiles yells, expecting pain. Instead, a blue barrier covers him, and Peter stands there, his hand against the barrier, a confounded look upon his face.

“I smelled that you had done the spell,” he says, quiet, subdued, “but when it did not react to my daughter, I had thought you performed it incorrectly.”

“Perhaps I presented less of a threat, dear father?” Malia says snidely. Stiles can definitely see how she is Peter’s daughter. She grins at Stiles far less menacingly than Laura. “I would apologize for my father, but he is right: how does a spark know where our alpha is when we can’t find him even though we have searched every conceivable place he could have gone?”

“How should I know? I only have the means to contact him, not actually find him. To find him, I would need greater help than my magic can provide.” He turns to Peter. “You are not the only one who thought the protection spell was ineffective. I am glad to have been proven wrong. However, Talia had assured me you would answer my questions for the information I could provide. Yeah, that’s not going to happen now. I cannot trust you. You have attacked me, and not a one of you moved to stop him.”

“You tried bargaining with our alpha,” Peter says. “How are we supposed to take that as anything but a threat?”

“I did not bargain anything. I simply asked if you would like to accompany me when I speak with Derek of this encounter.”

“Enough,” Talia shouts. There is still power in her voice even if Derek is the alpha. “No one is bargaining and no one is attacking. Peter, leave. If Stiles, the only lead we have to Derek, feels uncomfortable in your presence, then he does not have to stay. I will say this,” she pins Stiles with a severe stare, “we do and will take any cheeky wordplay as an assault against our pack. I suggest you do not test this more thoroughly for your own safety. I will return to you to speak with Derek if, and only if, you feel safe. We cannot help each other if we start on the path of mistrust.”

“I will need time to consider your offer,” Stiles says. He holds up a hand to prevent the protests of Cora and Laura. “Peter did attack me. The only reason I am probably still alive is because I took the precaution of a protection spell. As Talia said: we need to be on a path of trust. I don’t trust you. Not after that display. It was not my intention to ‘bargain’ or make a ‘flippant’ comment. But, I do need time to decide if I can make the same mistake as I did today.”

He marches out of the house without looking back. It’s not until he’s securely in his Jeep, the doors locked, his seatbelt on, and the ignition cranked, that he looks at the Hale house again. On the porch, he sees Talia and James, arms around each other. Talia raises one hand, and Stiles nods at her.

Once he turns back onto the main road into town, he lets out a sigh of relief. His hands are still shaking, and he doesn’t know how he was able to escape with a shaky truce like that.

Stupid, stupid, stupid to have gone in with no backup.

Never again.

Also, he needs to call Lydia, to see if she’s realized what she is by now. He wonders if she hasn’t. She’s brilliant even if she doesn’t truly embrace her supernatural side like he and Scott have.

~ * ~

Derek wakes up on Doc’s exam table in an empty room. An oversight, he’s sure. He doesn’t know if they realized Kira’s electricity was counteracting the substance.

They must not have. They must have been expecting him to be unconscious a lot longer. He has a catheter inserted. Derek glares down at it in disgust.

He is surprised to find that he can easily remove the cuffs on his wrists. No wolfsbane.

They really trust that substance.

He undoes the cuffs around his ankles and then grips the tubing. He grimaces and yanks it out in one smooth motion.

“Son of a bitch!” he hisses, curling as best as he can over his injury. Within a few minutes, he feels healed enough to hop off the table.

Even if he has been left alone in the room, he’s certain they wouldn’t have left him unguarded. He is still a werewolf.

As long as he is alone...

Derek shuffles to Doc’s desk, snorting at her nameplate, a hammered brass belt buckle that someone, probably Doc herself, scratched her name and the letters ‘P,’ ‘H,’ and ‘D’ into.

Derek discards it, turning his attention to the mountain of papers neatly stacked across the top of the desk. He takes little care with the papers. Doc was an emissary. She probably warded her desk, and he’s probably tripped those wards. He has limited time to find any useful information, like where the building housing them is located and with what substance they injected him.

He can’t find anything. All the papers are in shorthand but not one he recognizes. He doesn’t see any chemical formulas, and worryingly, no spells either. Nothing at all.

Frustrated, he snatches up the bowl of black licorice she keeps on the corner of her desk and heaves it against the wall. It shatters satisfyingly, and Derek goes back to the desk for more breakables.

If Ennis comes in, Derek knows he can take him. Ennis is human and injured. He’s more worried about Doc and her spells. Emissaries are chosen based on strength of spark. To have been an emissary, and then to have survived having her face clawed off by her own alpha...Doc is a very powerful spark.

Derek grabs the first thing he sees on the desk: a red envelope that was hidden beneath the bowl. He freezes, sniffing it delicately.

Hate, fear, and Doc’s perfume waft off of it.

Maybe he can use it as a bargaining chip? ‘Tell me what you’re drugging me with and I won’t tell your boss about this secret letter’?

No. Too simple. Doesn’t mean he can’t read it anyway to have as leverage. Obviously, Doc is scared of it.

Using a single claw, he lifts the flap, surprised when it doesn’t appear to have been sealed at all. Hand-delivered then. No wonder Doc is terrified.

The paper inside is well-worn, folded and unfolded so many times it’s almost falling apart, as if Doc rereads it often. Which is odd. It’s only three lines.

Derek pauses. He should know those names. Mom was trying to teach him etiquette after the power mysteriously left her and came to him, but he hadn’t had much time before Kate Argent abducted him.

Perhaps Kali was Doc’s alpha that tried to kill her? But, why then is Doc called Jennifer if Kali called her Julia?

“What are you doing?” Doc’s shrill voice demands. Derek drops the letter, moving into a defensive stance. Behind Doc, he can see Ennis with the wolfsbane cuffs. His arm isn’t in the sling anymore, but his wound stinks of infection.

Derek shrugs. “I was invading your privacy, like you invaded mine.”

Doc scoffs. “I did no such thing.”

Derek points at the discarded catheter, bloody end lying accusing by the exam table.

“That was necessary!”

“Why? Was I not supposed to regain consciousness after my fight? Oh, that’s right, your henchman told me I shouldn’t bother.”

Doc freezes. “Ennis said that?” She looks over her shoulder at the man. Ennis refuses to meet her eyes. “Why do you insist on taunting the animals?” She turns back to Derek and slams a hand against her desk. “Do you know how hard it is to be constantly one step ahead of all you animals?” Sigils on the desk glow green. Derek has never seen green magic before.

“Do you know how difficult it is to work in an environment where one mistake means death? Do you?”

“Do I know what it’s like to face death and walk away victorious?” Derek asks coldly. “Yes. Yes I do.”

“Please. Like your little cage fights are anything but staged.” Doc raises her hand, and the green magic follows, coalescing into a ball of energy.

“How can they be staged?” Derek demands. “We fight, we bleed. How many of us have you had to patch just to send back into the arena so we can die? Hmm? How many?”

“Not enough.” Doc throws the energy, and Derek dodges. But, the energy was never aimed at him.

Ennis drops to his knees, hands going to the hole now gaping in his stomach. Wordlessly, he falls forward, thumping onto the ground.

Derek doesn’t wait for his body to land. He launches himself forward, raking his claws down Doc’s back and racing for the door.

“No,” Doc says. “That won’t do at all.”

Something inside Derek tightens, and he collapses next to Ennis’ body. He manages to roll onto his back to face Doc as she comes to a stop next to his head. She kneels, fingers of one hand green again as she uses the other to brush through his hair.

“Such a shame. You were so beautiful. The way you moved, the way you rallied the other animals. Too bad you wasted it defending Ennis’ worthless life.”

“You can’t kill me,” Derek pants. “Just like you couldn’t kill Kali.”

Doc tilts her head. “What do you mean?”

“Why else would your alpha try to kill you? You attacked her. Why, I don’t know. I don’t care either. All I know is you both failed to kill each other. And now you’re working for Deucalion and hiding from Kali. Tell me, Julia, what kind of a life is that?”

Doc’s hand hovers over Derek’s chest. He can feel and smell the hair singeing from the proximity of that much raw magic.

“Julia,” he says again, and she shakes herself.

“Julia is dead,” she says. “There is only Jennifer now.”

“And who will be left when I kill Jennifer?”

Doc—Jennifer—looks up, her hands leaving Derek to point at the newcomer.

He sits up and stares at the woman. She has short brown hair, a cropped jean jacket and ratty capri pants. Her bare feet are capped with sharp talons. She’s an alpha, he can taste it in her stench.

She eyes him and snorts dismissively. Then, her gaze lands on Ennis, and her face twists into one of absolute rage. “What did you do to him?” she demands.

Doc glances at Ennis’ body briefly. “I did what I had to,” she says. “What I should have done in the first place.”

“I’ll kill you for that!”

“You’ll have to catch me first,” Doc says. She throws the energy at Kali and runs to her desk. Kali shakes off the hit, throwing her jacket to the ground where it smokes and smolders.

By the time she reaches the desk, Doc has disappeared in a blast of white light so bright it blinds. Derek takes the opportunity to escape from the room, aware that he has a fully enraged alpha werewolf on his heels.

He’s always been a fast runner. If he can make it back to his cell without getting lost, he can lock himself in the mountain ash barrier and avoid the wicked claws on Kali’s feet.

Yeah, it hadn’t escaped his notice that she’d jumped at Doc feet first.

He rounds the first corner and slams face first into a wall.

“Shit!” He scrabbles at it, looking for the hidden release. There has to be something there. This is usually an open hallway, isn’t it? He wishes he’d spent more time in Medical now. He would know the hallways here better.

Derek turns around to face Kali and his death with dignity. And hell, if he can, he’ll take her with him.

Back to the wall, claws and teeth at the ready, he flashes his eyes, waiting for Kali to come around the corner too.

Suddenly, the wall at his back is no longer there, and he stumbles backward falling on his ass and barely avoiding it when it slides up from the floor and blocks him in.

“Alpha,” someone says behind him.

~ * ~

Stiles is so furious that it takes him almost an hour to realize that he’s sitting outside his dad’s house and not his apartment. Not that Dad is home right now. The car isn’t parked in front of the garage where he likes to leave it despite the garage itself being mostly empty.

Stiles slams a hand on his steering wheel. Trust Dad to make himself scarce after leading him into danger.

As he sits there, fuming, Dad’s red pickup—some fancy Dodge model Stiles doesn’t care to know—pulls in behind him and lays on the horn.

“Oh, you wanna play that way?” Stiles grumbles to himself. He opens his door and all but jumps out. Dad grins at him.

“Stiles,” he says, cheerfully. “I didn’t expect you back from the Hales so soon. How did it go?”

“How did it go?” Stiles asks. He stomps his foot and slaps his hands together. “Oh, it went well,” he yells. Dad jerks back like Stiles hit him. “The only reason I’m still standing here is because I took the precaution of activating a protection spell. Peter fucking Hale tried to kill me.”

“What?!” Dad demands. He grabs Stiles and runs his hands over him, patting awkwardly at his back and shoulders. Stiles shrugs him off, but Dad doesn’t let him step away. “Peter Hale tried to kill you? A protection spell? Stiles, are you okay?”

“I’m not hurt,” Stiles says, as calmly as he can considering he’s still shaking hard enough that he can feel his teeth chattering. “I—my protection spell worked. Peter’s claws were stopped before they touched me.”

“I’m going to arrest that bastard,” Dad growls. He glares at his truck, probably wishing it was his patrol car.

“On what grounds?”

Dad nods at him. “For assault. Just because he didn’t make contact doesn’t mean it wasn’t assault with intent to maim.” He heads for the truck, no doubt ready to go on a rampage.

Stiles stops him with a hand on his arm. “Do you remember when Gerard Argent stabbed Scott for daring to ask his granddaughter Allison to dance at Prom our senior year? Do you remember how you couldn’t touch the fucker because Scott healed and ‘it never happened’ according to what the deputies could prove? This is like that. You can’t arrest Peter because there is no evidence of what he did. Besides, I’m sure as hell never going back out there no matter what.”

“About that,” Dad says, thoughtfully, “why did you want to know where the Hales live?”

Stiles waves a hand. “I met their wayward son, Derek. He wanted me to pass along a message that he was okay.”

“And they thanked you by having Peter attack you?” Dad’s fists clench, and Stiles knows, as soon as he leaves to go back to his apartment, his dad is going to go out to the Hales with or without backup.

“Dad, no. They’re werewolves. They’ll tear you and whoever you take with you to shreds. They didn’t hurt me because of my protection spell.”

“So do one for me.” Dad refuses to meet Stiles’ eyes.

“Um, what?” Stiles says eloquently. “You hate it when I do something magic.”

“So?” Dad shifts his unwavering gaze from the hydrangea bush to the Jeep’s taillight. At least he’s looking in Stiles’ general direction now.

“So, you refuse to accept that I am a spark. You never talk to me about my training. Anything I do that has even a bit of supernatural inclination and you start talking about the weather or the Dodgers. You hate the Dodgers and you think the weather stinks. Why would you want me to do a protection spell on you just so you can go arrest a werewolf?”

“Because he hurt you.”

“But, Dad, he didn’t.”

“Because you protected yourself.”

“And I can protect myself. That’s the point of my spark. It gives me the power and ability to keep dangerous people from hurting me.”

“I’m your father. It’s my job to protect you too.”

Hey, Dad’s looking at him now. The pain in his gaze makes Stiles swallow hard. “You do protect me,” he says. “But, you also hurt me when you don’t acknowledge all that I am.”

Dad blinks.

“Like,” Stiles says, waving his hands again because it’s hard to explain, hard to find the right words. “It’s like you don’t want me to be a spark.”

“It’s not that,” Dad says quietly. “It’s just that, everyone around you is something supernatural, something abnormal. And I just wanted you to be normal.”

“Well, Dad, this is my normal.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I’ll try harder to accept it.”

Dad looks defeated, small and lost. Stiles pulls him into a tight hug. “I know you will,” he whispers in his ear. “That’s all I ask.”

They cling to each other for a long moment before Dad lets Stiles go. They both pretend that they aren’t wiping away tears.

“Well,” Dad says gruffly. “If you’re sure that you don’t want me to arrest Peter Hale?”

Stiles smiles. “I don’t want you to arrest him. I’ve got an idea for him. Besides, I should really tell Deaton about my magic changing color.”

“What?” Dad freezes. “Stiles, what do you mean your magic changed color? Stiles!”

Stiles grins and swings himself up into the driver’s seat of his Jeep. “Gotta go, Dad. I’ll call you later.” He cranks the ignition, and then, just because he can, he throws it in drive and pulls a U-turn in the back yard, roaring past where his father is still standing, staring after him, one hand on his head like he’s holding onto his imaginary hat. Stiles flicks a finger and his dad jerks to shake off the purple hat made of magical energy that Stiles just conjured for him.

Stiles is still going to kill (or at least maim) Peter Hale, but he feels much better now.

~ * ~

Kira grins down at Derek, hanging over his head. “Alpha,” she says again. “Need some help?”

Derek nods. Kira offers him a hand up. He dusts off his legs, aware, again, that he is still nude while Kira has a ripped plaid miniskirt and a black t-shirt with a faded design.

“How did you get out of your cell?” he asks. As far as he knows, kitsunes are bound to the same rules with mountain ash that werewolves are.

Kira taps her nose. “Apparently, if you send electricity through mountain ash, it loses its power over the supernatural.”

That...does not make sense. Mountain ash is supposed to be infallible. Derek raises an eyebrow at Kira, to which she shrugs. Apparently electricity trumps mountain ash.

“Have you freed anyone else yet?” Wandering around alone as she is Derek doubts it.

“No,” Kira confirms. “Doc keeps testing me to make sure that I’m not a threat to the whole operation. It’s been draining tricking her.”

“Well, I’d say she’s busy now, if you want to help me rescue the others.”

Out of a hundred fighters that he has faced, Derek knows at least a quarter are still alive, trapped in mountain ash barriers inside larger cells locked with padlocks.

The padlocks won’t be a problem with his strength, and the mountain ash can easily be taken care of by Kira’s electricity.

For the first time since he woke up after Kate Argent’s attack, he feels elation. Hope swells in his chest. They will escape.

Kira claps her hands and jumps up and down in excitement. “Follow me,” she says. “I know all the tunnels. I’ve been exploring them for weeks now.”

They head down a corridor and turn, and turn again, and turn once more before Derek stops her with a hand on her shoulder. He inhales, almost choking on the stench wafting from the bottom of this hallway.

Something’s wrong.

It smells like death.

The arena usually stinks like this before it’s cleaned after a fight, but they aren’t close to the arena yet. Even with his sense of smell, he shouldn’t be able to smell it.

Kira starts forward again, and Derek tightens his grip on her shoulder. “Kira, wait.” He pointedly inhales again and almost gags on the thick odor. “Can you smell that?” Kitsunes do not have as great of a sense of smell as werewolves, but their noses are still more sensitive than humans.

Kira gulps in air and splutters, hands going to her nose and mouth. “Oh, what _is_ that?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” he replies, “but, I think we should check it out.” Kira shoots him a look filled with fear. “I know, but we need to make sure we’re not abandoning anyone.” Near to death smells remarkably like death, Derek has discovered.

“Yes, alpha,” Kira says, resigned.

Derek pulls her into a hug. “You are brave,” he says into her crooked part. Cora has the same trouble with parts when she wears pigtails, like Kira is now, the bedraggled ribbons barely clinging to her dark hair. “Thank you for helping me.”

Kira sniffles against his shoulder. “What if everyone is dead?”

“We’re not dead,” Derek says. “Not all of us can be dead—there are too many of us. They can’t have expected Kali to attack like this, so they can’t have immediately gone to killing everyone.”

“Okay.” Kira nods, squeezing Derek tightly for a brief moment before pulling back and wiping at her face. “I trust you.”

Derek wants to ask why, but he thinks it might have something to do with Kira calling him ‘alpha.’ Instead, he nods toward the arena and the daunting stench. “Let’s go.”

~ * ~

Deaton looks up from his chart with exaggerated calm, and Stiles just really wants to punch him.

What did he expect when Stiles called him and said they needed to talk?

“So,” Stiles bites out, and Deaton nods to the row of chairs against the wall. They both sit, and Stiles leans forward to press his arms over his lap. It helps hold down his leg so that he doesn’t bounce it. “So,” he starts again.

“Something about your magic changed?” Deaton inquires, an arched brow pointed at Stiles.

“Yes, yeah. Wait, how did you know?”

Deaton smiles. The urge to punch him intensifies. “Your aura,” Deaton says. “You’re starting to change from beginner to apprentice.”

“Wait, I thought I already was an apprentice?” Stiles frowns at him. “Isn’t that why you were training me?”

“Yes. I was training you. But, I’m afraid you’ve gone beyond what I can help you with. See, once your aura changes colors, you need a new teacher. If your aura changes color again, then I can help you again. But, for this transitional period, you’ll need someone else.”

“That is a load of horseshit.”

Deaton shrugs. “I don’t make the rules, Mr. Stilinski.”

“Now, see, I think you do. You’re obviously a spark as well as an emissary—”

“Former emissary,” Deaton corrects.

“Whatever. You know how to cultivate a spark. Otherwise, what’s the point of giving me all those books so that I could learn?”

Deaton sighs. “Stiles, you have a wonderful spark. Probably the strongest this generation. However, you have a very scattered mind. The books simply gave you something to focus on to keep from being distracted. Whatever you learn in them is whatever your magic decides to let you learn. I cannot teach you what I do not know.”

“So, you’re saying that right now, I’m more powerful than you?”

“Generation, Mr. Stilinski,” Deaton reminds him. “You are a very powerful spark. Of course, with training you could become stronger than me, but that remains to be seen.”

Stiles snaps his fingers, the purple flame edging into blue as he holds it out to Deaton. “And the aura? What’s that?”

Deaton smiles. “Your aura isn’t really an aura. Only certain supernatural creatures can see auras. Werewolves are one. Ask Scott about that sometime. What I am referring to is actually the evolution of your magic. You are being more disciplined in your practice. As such, your magic is reflecting that.”

“Blue is stronger than purple?” Stiles asks. He lets the flame dance over his hand before he curls his fingers around it, extinguishing it, letting his magic return to inside his body.

He scratches absently at one of the scrapes across his knuckles while he waits to see if Deaton has anything else to say.

Instead, Deaton grabs his hand and stares at the scratches and raw patches. “Where did you get these?” he demands, most un-Deaton-like.

Stiles jerks his hand free. “I don’t know. They just showed up when I was sleeping.” He studies them. They sort of look like if someone with claws grabbed him and tried to break his hands.

“Let me know if you develop any more unexplained injuries,” Deaton says. He grabs a pamphlet for yearly vaccinations and scribbles something in the blank space. He hands the pamphlet to Stiles and taps what he wrote. “She’s very good at training sparks but she won’t take on any new pupils this semester. Her husband teaches history at the collegiate level.”

“Fine, thanks, can I go now?” Stiles doesn’t wait for Deaton to dismiss him and stalks from the vet clinic.

Back on the road, he heads for his apartment, the pamphlet discarded on the front seat. What does he need with teacher who refuse to teach? He’ll just teach himself...again.

Stupid Deaton. Stupid Hales. Stupid everything.

~ * ~

Derek stares at the pile of bodies in the middle of the arena. All human, all officials. They were killed at least an hour or two ago. There’s no way Kali did this unless she stopped here first before seeking Jennifer out in Medical.

Kali’s feet had been clean. She didn’t do this.

Derek spins around to make sure Kira is still behind him. She is, but she’s panting, panicking.

They need to get out of here before whoever did this comes back for the survivors.

“Derek Hale,” a voice rings out, and he turns to face the balcony where the judges sit.

He glares with all his might at Kate Argent.

She smiles down at him. In the bright lights, her lips are blood red and her eyes warm chestnut. He shudders as she extends her hand, a small handgun tucked neatly into her palm.

“Miss me?”

“Kira, go back to the hallway. Go, free the others. I’ll take care of her.”

“Yes, little kitsune, run away while the big, bad werewolf takes on the accomplished hunter.”

“Not so accomplished if you have to sponsor a creature in the pits,” Kira shoots over her shoulder before running for the door. Derek moves also, distracting Kate. There are two pillars supporting the judges’ balcony. His claws and strength can help him reach her.

“Is it true?” he asks, and Kate laughs.

“What, that I’m so hard up for money that I needed to bet on your fights? Hardly.”

“You do realize that we are dying here, that we kill each other.”

“So? Better you kill other monsters rather than running free where hunters like my family have to spend years tracking your sorry hides. And if I make a little cash on the side,” Kate shrugs, waving the gun carelessly at Derek, “all the better.”

“Why did you kill the arena officials?” he asks. He chooses the left pole, searching it for handholds. The first few crumble away in his hands, but he gets the hang of it quickly, stabbing his claws deep into the marble and pulling himself up to wrap his legs around the pillar while he makes better handholds.

He can hear Kate pacing above him, her heartbeat accelerating the closer he gets to her. She’s not afraid, Derek thinks. He pauses, scenting the air.

Wolfsbane. In her gun. Probably in her bullets. Derek remembers Peter stumbling home once, his arm hanging useless by his side because he’d been shot by a wolfsbane bullet.

The only cure had been for their former emissary to burn the same strain of wolfsbane and pour the ashes in the wound.

Deaton claimed that there was another way to heal a wound like that with pure fire, but that would leave a scar and Peter’s proud.

“Oh come on, surely even a dumb animal like you can figure out the answer to that,” Kate laughs.

“The money?” Derek guesses. “They fixed my last fight so that I would lose. If you bet on me, you must have lost a lot of money.”

He swings up over the railing of the balcony, dropping onto his hands and knees and snapping his fangs at Kate.

“Millions,” Kate confirms. “When I found you in the woods, I knew you were my ticket. Moral enough that you wouldn’t kill a trespasser on your land and alone enough that no one would miss you until it was too late.”

“I’m not too moral that I won’t kill you now,” he says.

Kate laughs again. She aims her gun, center mass. “No you won’t,” she says and pulls the trigger.

Derek leaps forward, turning sideways so that the bullet grazes his upper chest instead of punching through his body. It still stings, but the concentration of wolfsbane isn’t great enough to slow him down, and he plows into Kate, knocking her and several chairs over.

Before she can recover, he rakes his claws over her arm, ripping away the gun and a few of her fingers. She screams, kicking him, fumbling at her belt for another weapon. Derek tears it away too, the Taser clattering across the floor.

“It’s over, Kate,” he says. He puts his foot on her uninjured hand, presses enough that he can feel the bones shifting. “Do you still think I won’t kill you?”

Kate spits at him. “You don’t have it in you, Hale. How you became alpha is a joke, a fluke. You were never meant to be more than a frightened boy trampled in the wake of his family.”

Derek presses more weight onto her hand, and she whimpers. “My family loves me despite everything. If you think you can save yourself by insulting them…Goodbye.” He leans down and hauls her upright. She still struggles as he shoves her against the railing. Peter would tear her throat out. Mom would have Peter do it.

Derek has had enough of literal blood on his hands, so he simply leverages her over the railing and lets her fall to the sand-covered floor of the arena.

Her shriek rattles in his ears, worming into his brain, carrying the knowledge that he is the reason she is lying broken and bleeding, dead. Derek ducks away to wipe away tears. She was a monster, yes, but that doesn’t mean he can’t feel bad about her death. Especially because it means that he has finally killed someone. He finally became the animal she said he was.

The doors to the arena burst open, and Jennifer comes running through. Derek ducks down, cowering beneath a chair. He can hear her approaching Kate’s body, scoffing at it.

“I know you’re here,” she calls, and Derek moves so that he can peek down at her. She waves at him. “Thank you for the sacrifice.” She kneels down, fingers dipping into the pool of blood that Kate lies in.

She paints a symbol over one cheek and one hand, flexing her fingers and drawing energy to her fingertips.

She smiles coldly. “Of all the things I ever could do,” she says, sadness in her voice, “I never could heal myself. Magic is fickle. You can do things to others, but you cannot do them to yourself.” The magic grows, and the symbols glow too. Derek backs away, bounding over the chairs and heading for the spectators’ entrance. As soon as he hits the door, he breaks through, tumbling head over heels as he falls down the stairs.

He hits the ground hard enough to be winded, and he lies there, gasping wetly as his lungs, punctured by his broken ribs, mend. His arms and legs crack back into place and he struggles upright, limping on a busted knee.

He stumbles out into the lobby where the money must exchange hands. On the other side of the room, Jennifer stands, her ball of magic aimed at him.

“I could have been many things,” she says, “but I chose to be an emissary. My alpha ripped me to shreds when she realized that the man she loved would not mate with her if she still had pack. My only crime was defending myself.”

“And what is my crime?” Derek asks.

“Do you know why you suddenly became alpha and your mother became your beta?”

Derek shakes his head. Before Kate stole him away, before Derek had become an alpha, he had been his mother’s beta.

One of his mother’s friends, another alpha by the name of Satomi Ito, had come to her with troubled news of werewolves killing their own packs, stealing the power of their betas. Mom and Derek had been reinforcing the east side of their perimeter when a large flash of white energy engulfed them.

When they had woken, Derek was the alpha and Mom was the beta (frightening to Derek was the fact that his mom’s eyes were electric blue). They had run home to chaos. As they had a new alpha, their old emissary, Dr. Alan Deaton could not serve them any longer, and had left with the parting words of, “You’ll figure it out.”

Months later, and they hadn’t figured it out at all. Derek couldn’t get the pack to listen to him as an alpha, and Mom refused to cede to him. It was why he’d spent more time patrolling their land, searching for the source of the strange energy. He had found Kate Argent instead.

“You’re an alpha because of me,” Jennifer says. “I needed power to stay alive. My intention was to take it from Kali, but she left me in such a weakened state that I could not take hers before she was beyond my reach. Instead, poetically, I took it from the man she had tried to kill me for.”

“Ennis,” Derek breathes, remembering Kali’s reaction to Ennis’ body.

“Exactly. It was also wonderful to have stolen the power of the man pulling Kali and Ennis’ strings: Deucalion.”

“The rumors are true then? Deucalion was once a werewolf?”

“Until I removed what made him an alpha. He had so much power that it was simple to change his genetics, make him completely human. Of course, I did the same to Ennis. I imagine I was doing that to your mother and you too, but the power I took from them was more than enough and I stopped seeking it.”

“You pulled our powers out of us and when you stopped they went back to the wrong bodies?”

Jennifer smiles. “Yes.”

“Can’t you reverse it then? Give my mom back her alpha power and I can go back to being a beta?”

“I would,” Jennifer says, “but then I’d probably have to give up the power I took from Deucalion and Ennis, and I don’t want to do that.”

Derek cocks his head, behind the racing of his and Jennifer’s hearts, he can hear quick footsteps. He looks back to Jennifer, wondering if he should tell her that Kali is coming.

He decides not to. If she won’t fix what she broke, then he doesn’t have to help her. He should go hide. His chest still burns from the wolfsbane anyway.

“Derek,” Jennifer says. He pauses, glancing back over his shoulder. She lobs the ball of magic at him, and he drops to his hands and knees to avoid it.

“What was that for?” he demands, standing up and unsheathing his claws. He wonders if her death would have the same effect at undoing her manipulations. Worth a shot.

“You don’t get to walk away from me. I might need the power you hold if I’m going to defeat Kali. Yes, I know she’s coming. She’s almost here now.”

“Wrong,” Kali says from the balcony above them. “I’m already here.”

~ * ~

The books Stiles has in his bedroom have absolutely no good information no matter what Stiles chooses. There is nothing in them about magical mirrors or alphas trapped in them. He also can’t find anything about inter-dimensional portals. Instead, what he finds is the classification of magic and color association. His purple ‘apprenticeship’ is really, as Deaton explained, novice magic versus one ready to be trained. There is no definite level at which he will master his magic, but if he learns to control it properly, he can have green energy instead of purple or blue.

Frustrated, Stiles chucks the book at the wall. It smacks loudly, pages fluttering, tearing loose. He winces. Deaton is going to tan his hide for that.

Unless.

Stiles knows a few repair spells. Mostly, he uses them on his Jeep. As long as he isn’t trying to be selfish—saving money—the magic works. (He can usually trick it into thinking that he’s trying to save the lives of the people he encounters when he’s behind the wheel. Don’t judge him.)

This time, he weaves the spell to fix the book for Deaton, as a gift, and the spine uncracks slowly. The pages mend themselves, a needle and thread of blue energy sewing them neatly before vanishing into thin air.

Gingerly, Stiles picks up the book, thumbing through it quickly to make sure that the pages are where they are supposed to be. It seems the spell worked perfectly, and he sets it on his nightstand. The book is still useless though, and frustrated, he fists his hands in his hair and tugs. He casts about for something less fragile, or at least something that is his and not Deaton’s, to throw.

Instead, he finds the grimoire, leaning against his pillow. He doesn’t recall leaving it there, but he must have since he lives alone.

Suspicious, and maybe a little fearful, he approaches the bed to grab it with one hand, the other held out with more energy, ready to shoot the book if it so much as trembles.

As soon as his fingers touch it, it opens, pages flipping until it reaches the section on werewolves. Stiles leans closer, the magic in his hand absorbing back into his body, scanning the page for anything he might have missed when he studied it earlier. His eyes keep skipping over the words without registering them, and he shakes his head. He’s still shaken from breaking Deaton’s book and finding this one here.

Stiles wonders if Derek is back at the mirror yet. He realizes he has no idea how time passes in the other world (the not-other dimension, his mind supplies).

He still has a bone to pick about his shower curtain plus he needs to inform Derek that his family sucks.

He takes the grimoire with him in case he can get Derek to read it for him.

Unsurprisingly, the mirror is just a mirror. Stiles takes the opportunity to chuck the bottle of hand soap at the blackened pile of plastic in the tub. It is less satisfying than he hoped.

Well, Scott should be off work now anyway. His friend can read for him.

~ * ~

Derek backs away from Jennifer. He doesn’t want her taking his alpha power from him. If it does to him what it did to Deucalion and Ennis, it will make him human and then he won’t be of use to anyone—Kali or Jennifer will kill him before he can escape.

Those two can fight. He’ll just go help Kira get the rest of the prisoners to his cell and hopefully Stiles will be there and can get them through the portal.

Derek wonders, though, where Deucalion is in all this. He can only hope his body is in the pile Kate left. Somehow he doubts it. He didn’t see the man’s flashy shoes. Even if he’s human, he was once a werewolf, his survival instincts may have kicked in before Kate could kill him.

Derek takes one more step back, and Jennifer flicks her ball of energy at him. It explodes in front of him, showering him with splinters and bits of burned tile. “Freeze, Hale,” she growls. “I still need you.”

“Oh how fun,” Kali says. “You can’t kill me even with the power of this false-alpha.”

Derek glares at her. The whole reason he’s an alpha in the first place is because Kali already tried to kill Jennifer once. He really would like a better explanation for why the harmony of his pack was disrupted so thoroughly by their selfish lover’s spat. What could Jennifer have done that made Kali try to off her in the first place? Why would killing her pack and emissary lead Kali to a relationship with Ennis? Answers are not forthcoming.

Kali leaps off the balcony, and Jennifer lobs smaller balls of energy at her. Unnoticed, Derek steps back again. His hand is on the door, and he just needs a few more seconds of distraction before he can escape.

He doesn’t get those seconds as Kali hits the floor with a roar, slashing her claws at Jennifer, who draws out a thin whip of green energy. From his bellybutton, Derek feels a pull dragging him closer to them.

He fights it, but the harder he jerks his body away the more it hurts, feeling like a knife sliding up his abdomen, heading for his lungs and heart.

Derek swears he can hear his ribs cracking again, re-breaking, and then he feels woozily, aimless, and drops to his knees. Above him, he can see tendrils of red energy trailing toward Jennifer.

Kali performs a front flip over Jennifer, one foot coming close to Jennifer’s face. In moving to avoid it, she steps back into Kali’s other foot, and impales herself on the claws.

The red energy stops moving, hanging above all three of them before slowly receding back into Derek’s body. He can feel the magical wound healing inside him, and he forces himself unsteadily to his feet. If Kali kills Jennifer, he has no guarantee that she won’t come after him. He can’t lead her to Kira and the other survivors.

He’ll have to kill Kali. Slowly, he steps forward, instincts screaming at him to run. Running won’t do him any good if Kali is stronger, faster, _healthier_ than he is.

Jennifer laughs weakly, where she’s fallen from Kali’s attack. “You think I’m done?” she asks, coughing through the blood staining her lips. “You think I don’t still have enough energy to eviscerate you?”

Kali wags a finger at her. “I think you should save your strength,” she says. “You’ll need it in the afterlife.” She is too busy taunting Jennifer, and Jennifer is too busy trying to make a shield of energy to realize that Derek has managed to sneak up on Kali.

“False-alpha,” he reminds her with his claws in her throat. He tears them out quickly, blood spurting warm and thick over his fingers, arcing to spray over Jennifer. He lets Kali’s body fall away and then jumps backward as Jennifer’s shield passes where he stood not a second before.

“Kali is dead,” Derek says, and he can feel a portion of her power settling in his body. “The only one left is Deucalion. Surely you can kill a human even after that attack?”

Jennifer rises with trouble, stumbling toward him. Derek moves back. He has no desire to help her; she has made her mess, and she must deal with the consequences. His only goal is to get the survivors through the portal before Jennifer becomes unstable enough to seek them out and kill them as Kate killed the officials.

“I can change you back,” Jennifer says, wheezing. “I can make you a beta again. I need you to help me.”

“You tried to kill me,” Derek says, incredulous. “You’ve kept me prisoner here for months, made me fight my own people. You have given me no reason to help you at all. If you don’t die here, I will kill you.”

He walks away from her, aware that it is probably among the stupidest things he has ever done—the first being to offer assistance to Kate Argent.

When he doesn’t feel the pain of his powers being drawn out again, he risks a glance over his shoulder. Jennifer has slumped over Kali’s body and she is drawing runes with the blood pooled there.

Derek leaves her to it.

He needs to get out of this place, and he knows of no better way than the portal in his former cell.

~ * ~

 “What exactly are you looking for?” Scott asks after he answers the door.

Stiles shoves the grimoire in his face and taps the illustration of the werewolf. “This, Scott.”

Scott frowns at him. “It thought you were okay with me being a werewolf.”

“No, Scott. The mirror in my bathroom? It’s a portal to another place. There’s a werewolf on the other side, an alpha.”

“Is that why you fainted?”

Stiles glares at him. “No,” he says, angry. He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. Quieter, calmer, he says, “When I ‘fainted,’ I was knocked out by a bright light. You and my dad just happened to find me shortly after.”

“So why do I have to read your bestiality book?”

Stiles snatches the book back, affronted. “First off, this is a grimoire or a magical bestiary. And second, you have to read it because I can’t focus well enough to do it myself right now. Now, are you going to insult my book again or help me?”

Contrite, Scott takes the book back and it opens to the werewolf section again. “Okay, so read it all or just certain parts, ‘cause there’s a lot of stuff here.”

“Read it all, I’ll parse out the important bits from there.”

It takes the better part of an hour to read everything. Scott has greatly improved since high school when teacher’s requests would have him stuttering over even the simplest words. By the time he’s done, Stiles is certain the marks on his hand have manifested from some sort of physic bond between Derek and himself. It makes sense that the mirror would latch onto the magic user. Maybe that was its way of asking him to help.

Or maybe it means he can open the portal himself instead of waiting for Derek.

“Hey, Scott, got any plans for tonight?”

Scott shoots him a suspicious look. “No,” he says, like he regrets telling Stiles that.

“Great! Wanna go on an adventure?”

“Where exactly? The last time I went on an ‘adventure’ with you, I got bitten by that rogue werewolf seeking asylum with the Amos pack.”

“My bathroom,” Stiles says. He still feels guilty about being the cause of Scott’s werewolfism (several eyewitness accounts of an animal in the woods around the school of their biggest rivals in high school, and Stiles had thought it would be a good idea to try and catch it), but he doesn’t think it warrants this level of suspicion from Scott.

“Obviously,” Scott snorts. “Just, are we staying in your bathroom or are we going into the mirror world?”

“If I can crack the portal, we’d be going into the mirror world. I’ll make a protection spell for you too. Derek says they are fought like dogs or something.”

“What.”

Stiles sighs. “I don’t know, Scott. I don’t. All I do know is that I need to figure out why my bathroom mirror leads to a maybe-different dimension. I have to get Derek out of the mirror.”

“Who’s Derek?” Scott asks.

“Derek? You know, Derek, the werewolf in the mirror. The reason my hands look like I tried playing catch with rocks. Derek!”

“Derek who?”

“Hale, like the pack that lives in the preserve.”

“Oh, those werewolves. Yeah, Alpha Satomi Ito says avoid them right now. Their alpha went missing and they’re all a little mad right now—like crazy, not angry, although I suppose they would be angry about it.”

“You couldn’t have bothered to tell me this before I went to talk to them?” Stiles groans, rubbing his hands over his face. Scott looks at him with worry.

“You went to the Hales? Why?”

“Dude, did you not hear me say anything? I had to tell them I found Derek.”

“I don’t understand, is Derek their alpha?”

“Yeah. His eyes glow red and everything. It makes sense then why they attacked me when I visited.”

“They attacked you?” Scott immediately starts patting at him. It reminds him of his dad earlier. Stiles slaps his hands away.

“Peter attacked me. He was unsuccessful because of my protection spell. If I get Derek out of the mirror, then he can go and alpha them up so that they lose their dangerous edge. And then I can exact my revenge on that asshole Peter.”

“I don’t think I fully understand,” Scott says.

Stiles sighs. “What we need to do is go to my bathroom, see if I can activate the mirror in such a way that we can go through it, rescue Derek, get back to my bathroom, and then give Peter Hale such a nasty shock that he’ll think twice before he attacks any other innocent sparks.”

Scott shakes his head. “I still don’t fully understand, but I’m with you. Let’s go to your bathroom.”

“Onwards!” Stiles cries, grabbing the grimoire from Scott. “Although,” he says once they are both buckled into the Jeep, the engine on, and Stiles shifting to drive, “you could be a little more enthusiastic about our adventure. And look on the bright side: you can’t get turned into a werewolf again.”

“Joy,” Scott says blandly.

~ * ~

Derek catches up to Kira in the cellblock just before the one his is in. She’s amassed a group of about thirty or so supernaturals, all looking the worse for wear. Some of them are naked like Derek, others in torn clothes with the blood still staining them. Derek wrinkles his nose at the stench of fear and anger wafting off the group. The sweat and blood and unwashed bodies takes a backseat to it.

Kira looks relieved to see him.

“We could hear the fighting,” she says. “We thought you died.”

“Not today,” Derek says. He studies everyone carefully, evaluating injuries. No one appears hurt, but appearances can be deceiving and with the way his nose burns from all the smells, he isn’t sure he can pick it out in time.

“Wait,” he says, gesturing toward an alcove. “One at a time, stand here. I’m going to see if everyone is okay. Starting with you.” He points at a fully-shifted wendigo.

The boy (he looks all of twelve years old to Derek) steps forward, and Derek inhales deeply.

He nods at him and the boy returns to the crowd. Derek points at another person and repeats the process. In the end, it’s only Kira (slight electrical burns to her hands) and an old werewolf (healing from what looks like complete evisceration) who are injured.

Kira grabs his arm, points at the sluggish black blood dripping from the graze on his chest. Wordlessly, she slaps a palm full of electricity onto the wound. Derek bites back a howl at the pain as the wolfsbane burns away leaving his skin new and unblemished.

He thanks her quietly before turning to the crowd. “There’s a portal in my cell. If we can get there and get the spark that lives on the other side to open it, we can all get out of here.”

“Why can’t we walk out the front door?” someone asks.

Derek squares his shoulders. “I didn’t kill Jennifer—Doc. Her wards are still in place. If we try to escape that way, it’s likely that we’ll all die.”

“You just happen to have the cell with an entrance in it,” an urban troll says. Derek thinks her name is Patricia. She slams a hand onto his shoulder, and it’s only because he managed to set his legs that he doesn’t collapse under the hit. “Who’s to say that you aren’t working with the bastards who put us here?” One person, even a troll, Derek could disperse, but the scent taking over the others is anger. They need someone to punish for how they’ve been treated. Derek is just the unfortunate soul in their sights. He doesn’t know if he should fight or not. There’s no way he can win against thirty supernatural creatures.

“Hey!” Kira shouts over the growing clamor. “Are you forgetting all the times Derek spared your lives?”

The crowd pauses, falling silent.

“How many of you faced the alpha and lived?” Kira continues. “How many of you faced someone who had survived the alpha and lived because of it? Derek isn’t the reason you’re here in this hellhole, but he’s sure as fuck the reason you’re getting out of it.”

Patricia removes her hand slowly. Derek recalls the lament she sang when her mate was killed. She’d been loud, grieving, and though their cells were far apart, his ears had picked it up. He hadn’t faced her yet, but he’s positive that if they hadn’t thrown Derek’s last fight, they would have met in the arena sooner than later.

“I’m sorry,” she says, a quiet rumble.

“I understand,” Derek says. There is nothing else to say, so Derek turns on his heel and marches toward his cell. The others follow. A few of them grumble a little, but a spark from Kira’s hand silences them.

Derek shoots her a grateful smile when she takes her place next to him, near enough that they can knock shoulders while they walk.

She’s turning out to be a wonderful asset, and he almost wishes he could offer her a place in his pack. He won’t though, unsure if she would want to mingle with wolves. If she asks though, he’ll offer.

He wonders what it would be like to have a second who actually trusts his judgment and follows his lead.

~ * ~

Scott is a worrywart and forces Stiles to place the protection spells on them before they even step foot in the bathroom. Then he spends the whole time crouched in the corner like he’s expecting the mirror to jump off the wall and bite him. To be fair, the mirror can and will attempt to kill them, and Scott stares bug-eyed at him before stabbing a finger at the charred shower curtain.

“Are you sure you should be touching that?” Scott asks when Stiles starts tapping the runes on the frame.

“How else am I supposed to turn it on?” Stiles demands. One of the runes depresses with a soft click and, probably because his ear is almost pressed to the surface, Stiles can hear the hum of it activating. He steps back, shooting Scott a triumphant grin.

“So that’s it? We just go through?” Scott looks dubious. Stiles doesn’t blame him.

“I guess.” He eyes the portal. It seems innocuous enough, but it’s magic. Stiles knows better than to trust it. Deaton has had to heal him a time or two from magical mishaps.

“Maybe we should test it first,” Stiles suggests, glancing around for something with which to poke the mirror.

He settles on his loofah-on-a-stick. He should replace it anyway as he thinks his dad gave it to him for his birthday or Christmas last year. Scott nods approvingly. Stiles takes a few practice swings before impacting the mirror with the mesh end of the bath implement.

Almost immediately, it starts smoking, bursting into flame, burning like a beacon. Stiles throws it into the tub and cranks on the faucet.

Scott stares wide-eyed at it.

“Yeah, we’re not getting through that right now,” Stiles says, turning off the water. “Look, give me some time, I’ll come up with a spell that’ll work.”

“You do that, I’m going home to take a shower.” Scott scratches at a particularly thick patch of poultice, flaking it off. “Call me before you do anything else okay? I want to help.”

“Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Go have fun, Scotty.”

The front door of his apartment slams shut behind Scott, and Stiles sighs.

He goes to his bedroom, falling face first onto his bed and grabbing the first book he can reach. Ugh. The thickest tome with the most archaic Latin. Where is Lydia when her friends need her? Oh, yeah, at her job like a responsible adult. When she isn’t solving mathematical theorems, she works as a paralegal at her boyfriend’s father’s firm.

He could text her or call her or just pretend to have an emergency even if she’ll take her revenge later.

Stiles runs his hands through his hair. It’s not worth being dragged to one of Lydia’s math conventions. Or shopping. It’s a toss-up right now which activity she spends more time doing.

He shoves the book away and grabs the next one. This book, like the grimoire, opens to a specific set of pages without Stiles searching.

Familiars. So not helpful. Stiles slams the book shut and throws it at the Latin book.

The next book he picks out is the same familiars book, opened to the same section again. Startled, Stiles chucks it at the wall. If it is broken, he’ll fix it later.

None of the books in here are useful. He sends the familiars book a glare, making sure that it’s still crumpled against his closet door. It is. Feeling a little guilty, he picks it up and flattens the creased pages. He sets it on the nightstand. A small shock burns his palm as he pulls away, and thoroughly creeped out (that is one book Deaton is getting back ASAP), he heads for the living room where he keeps even more books, these ones he acquired because they looked interesting or were pretty.

A thin silver book with blue-edged pages flies into his hand as soon as he reaches his bookcase.

Stiles makes a note to ask Deaton about sentient books. That’s got to be a thing, right? He’s not just imagining the fact that these books are trying to be helpful.

This book is all about enchanting objects, and Stiles flips through it quickly, finding mirrors near the end. He settles on his couch to read.

A few minutes later, he shuts the book, one finger inside, holding his place.

The runes inscribed in the mirror hold magical energy even after the demise of the original spark. Additionally, if made into buttons, they can be pressed in a pattern to open different portals (So Derek was right to call the mirror that). The pattern can be entered on the side the parties wish to travel from—meaning if Stiles wants to join Derek, he has to enter the right pattern. Vice versa for Derek to join him. But, it doesn’t have to be done that way. Stiles can enter the pattern and have Derek come through the mirror. Helpful and simple enough. If only Stiles knew the right pattern.

As soon as he thinks it, the book opens and flips to the back pages, usually left intentionally blank (signature pages, his English teacher called them, explaining something about the way books were printed), finding a diagram of the exact mirror in his bathroom. On the next page, there is a drawing of a rectangle of runes with a few circled and numbered. On the bottom of both descriptions, the initials JB stand out. It takes an embarrassingly long time for Stiles to realize that it’s because they are colored green while the rest of the ink is black and not because he thinks he recognizes the handwriting.

It’s so convenient that Stiles almost doesn’t believe his luck. This book, he remembers, was a gift from Lydia when he graduated college a little over a year ago.

Well, banshee powers or luck, Stiles has an answer. He shoots a text to Scott, only just now realizing that since he drove Scott to his apartment, Scott would have had to walk home.

Scott responds almost immediately and predictably it’s a warning to not do anything before he returns.

Stiles scoffs. Like he’s going to try it without a freaking werewolf to protect him from anything that might be on the other side of the mirror. Instead, Stiles decides he’s going to increase the potency of his protection spells. And maybe look into not making it so itchy for his friend.

~ * ~

When they get to his cell, Derek is surprised to see that the mountain ash board has been replaced and the barrier is intact.

Inside of it, slapping the portal’s runes haphazardly is Deucalion. He hears them, too many of them to hide the sound of their footsteps, and whirls about, hands held in front of him.

“Ah,” he says, like he knows what they’ve come to do. “I can help you escape,” he offers.

Patricia roars, charging the barrier. Derek grabs her before she makes contact. “Kira can open the barrier. Then you can reach him.” Deucalion looks terrified. Derek does not feel sorry for him.

He was changed to human and set up this hell. Derek has to wonder why he started working with Jennifer. Shouldn’t he have resented her for stealing his power and making him defenseless?

Kira draws up electricity, collecting it in her palms. Her wince doesn’t go unnoticed, and Derek places a hand on her arm to both steady her and draw her pain. She blasts the ground near the board. Derek can feel the shock traveling up his feet, and he grits his teeth against the flood of pain that follows.

Deucalion screams in agony before Kira manages to draw the electricity back into her fingers. She succeeded though, and the board has been blasted away from the rest of the barrier, making it ineffective. Patricia steps forward and grabs Deucalion by the front of his shirt.

“You won’t get away with the deaths you’ve caused,” Patricia growls. Deucalion whimpers, kicking uselessly as she hauls him up. “My husband, my child, the dozens of others you’ve had killed just so you could make money. You’ll answer for all of them.”

“First,” someone says from behind the supernaturals. Derek freezes. Kali. He’d killed her, hadn’t he? He’d felt her power enter him. Why is she still alive? “Let’s make the fight a little more fair.”

Kali steps forward and the crowd parts. In Kali’s hand, Jennifer dangles, feet dragging across the floor, leaving trails of blood.

“Next time you rip someone’s throat out, make sure they’re fully decapitated before you leave them,” Kali says to Derek. She tugs Jennifer upright, places the claws of her hand against her already-lacerated throat and tears. Jennifer’s head rolls off her neck and bounces away. Several of the supernaturals scream in fear and disgust, and Derek can hear vomit splattering as a few throw up. He stands shocked, watching Jennifer’s body fold down. Kali grins, eyes red, fangs snapping.

Derek backs away, unsheathing his own claws and letting his fangs drop.

Kali stalks forward, but Derek stands his ground. If it takes killing her like she just killed Jennifer to make sure she stays dead, then he’d better make sure he hits first and fast.

Kali springs forward, feet slicing in front of his face, forcing him backward.

People scramble away, most heading for the hallway. Where they’re going, he has no idea. They won’t get far unless Jennifer’s wards died with her.

As if summoned, a bright light emerges from the woman’s body. Kali freezes, turning to look at where the body lies.

“No!” she shrieks. “No! Stop it, Julia! Haven’t you taken enough from me?”

Derek feels his body tingling with the release of Jennifer’s magic. Behind him, he hears Deucalion thud against the ground and he jerks around. Patricia dropped Deucalion, and the man sits on the ground staring at his hands. Cracks of light appear on his arms, on his face. Derek can see the light burning through his clothing.

Deucalion begins screaming, thrashing wildly. Patricia steps back, a worried expression twisting her features.

“I didn’t do anything yet,” she says.

“I think it has something to do with the fact that Jennifer turned him human. The power she stole should return to the original person with her death. He’ll be a werewolf unless we kill him now.”

“I don’t think I can do that,” Patricia says. She wipes away a tear. “He’s defenseless right now. It wouldn’t be right.”

“It wasn’t right what he did to us,” Derek points out before sighing and scrubbing at his face. “No, you’re right. I’ll help you kill him once he’s recovered.”

“Or I could do it now,” Kali says, angrily. She stomps past them and plunges her hand into Deucalion’s side, tearing out his lungs and part of his heart. The man gasps wetly and falls still. Kali stands up. “There,” she says.

Derek crouches down, waiting for Kali to renew her attack. “I’m guessing you just stole the alpha power that was returning to him,” he says.

“Why guess when you’re right?” Kali wipes her claws on Deucalion’s shirt. “Now I’m stronger than you can ever hope to be.” She grins, all teeth.

Derek bares his own at her. “I won’t let you kill us,” he says.

“But I don’t want to kill all of you,” Kali says. “Just you.”

“Not if I can help it,” Kira says bravely even if her voice wavers wildly. Derek and Kira stand shoulder to shoulder facing down Kali, and Derek knows, can feel it in his bones, one of them isn’t going to make it.

~ * ~

Stiles has just put the finishing touches on his potion (more rosemary and thyme and some dill weed he found behind an expired box of breadcrumbs) when Scott arrives out of breath.

“Dude, did you run?” Stiles asks, a raised eyebrow to Scott’s heaving chest.

“Inhaler,” Scott gasps instead. Stiles waves his hand and forces some energy into his friend to relax him. “Thanks,” Scott says calmer, breathing almost easily now.

“Don’t thank me yet,” Stiles says. “I figured out the mirror so there’s still a chance for things to go sideways.”

“Oh,” Scott says, “yeah. That.”

Stiles grins and starts painting him with the new protection spell. Scott’s nose twitches and he sneezes. Stiles thinks it doesn’t smell so nice either, and he winces in sympathy as Scott sneezes several more times in quick succession.

“Too strong?” he asks, and Scott nods. “Sorry.”

He slathers himself with the goopy paste too and mutters his mantra. Both he and Scott light up blue with magic, and finally Scott’s sneezes abate.

“Ready?”

Stiles doesn’t wait for Scott’s affirming nod before he heads into the bathroom and presses the runes in order. The mirror hums to life again, and Stiles reaches for the burned stick of the loofah brush to test the surface. He pauses though at what he can see in the mirror.

A group of people. Two naked and two clothed. Three females. One male. A large misshapen body with sagging breasts and a long ponytail, a sprightly teenage girl with a single tail curling from under her torn miniskirt, and two werewolves facing off.

Derek.

In the middle of the group, Derek with squared shoulders, fangs and claws, and glowing red eyes. It’s a fight and the way he and the female werewolf keep eyeing each other, one of them is going to attack soon.

“Scott,” Stiles calls. “Scott! Get in here now!”

Scott skids into the bathroom. “What, Stiles? Did it not work?”

“No,” Stiles says, pointing. “It worked. But, there’s a fight.”

“Oh.” Scott squints at the people for a moment. “Is Derek the naked boy werewolf?” he asks. Stiles smacks his shoulder.

“Yes, Derek is the male werewolf. I don’t know who the others are or if they’re on his side.”

“Well, obviously the female werewolf isn’t.” Stiles hits Scott again.

The other werewolf jumps at Derek, swinging a foot at his throat. Derek dances backward, grabbing her leg and throwing off her balance. The teenager slams a hand full of electricity onto the werewolf’s back before Derek pulls her out of the way of a retaliating swipe of claws. The misshapen body thumps both her fists onto the werewolf’s leg, and the sharp snap makes Stiles wince.

“Okay,” Scott says, “so that means it’s three against one.”

“Yeah.”

“Think they need our help?”

Stiles doesn’t answer. Instead, he shoves a footstool up to the sink and then touches the surface. His fingers skate across it, and no matter how hard he presses, he can’t get through the mirror.

“I don’t get it. It should have worked.”

“Maybe,” Scott says, “and it’s probably just a stupid suggestion, but what if your protection spell is preventing you from going into the mirror world?”

“That’s stupid,” Stiles starts. Except. What if Scott’s right? Stiles scrapes off a bit of the spell from his finger and presses it to the mirror. Nope. Scott’s wrong. “It’s something else,” he tells Scott.

Stiles climbs down and watches the fight, feeling useless and impotent as Derek and the others dodge blows from the female werewolf. There has to be something he can do to help.

“Hey, Stiles?” Scott says, and Stiles turns around at the almost panic he can hear in his friend’s voice.

“What?”

Scott points at the floor where the damn book about familiars is creeping along.

“What the hell?” Stiles mutters, bending down to pick it up. Scott lets out an undignified squeak and backs away.

“It’s just a book.” A book that is definitely sentient because it’s fucking purring as Stiles strokes the spine. “Why do you like me so much?”

It doesn’t respond except to flip open to the section on familiars again.

“What does it mean?” Scott whispers.

Stiles barely hears him, scanning the lines for a clue. “It means…” There! That’s it. “Scott, we can share magic!”

“‘We’?” Scott repeats warily.

“Yeah, we. Well, not you and me but Derek and me!”

“You can?”

“Remember what I said about mystic bonds?”

“No. You said nothing about mystic bonds. Is that what you have with Derek?”

Stiles runs his finger down a line of text detailing how beneficial it is for sparks to join with their familiars in a magical way. Stiles hopes it means sharing his magic with Derek because as nice as it would be to connect…ahem…in other ways, Stiles doesn’t really think that Derek has time for a quick fuck.

Just the idea of it makes Stiles blush.

Not that he wouldn’t be amendable to doing that with Derek.

Oh God, he’s falling in lust with a werewolf!

“What?” Scott asks. “What’s wrong? Why do you smell so embarrassed and aroused right now?”

“Nosy much?”

“Sorry.”

“Anyway, I should try sharing magic with Derek now, before that bitch gets a good hit in.”

The book flips a few pages forward and Stiles studies the inscription, tracing the runes and murmuring them out loud so that the corresponding ones on his back light up.

He can feel the magic bursting from his skin, settling over him like a cloak. Then, he steps forward and puts his hands on the mirror—through the mirror. Stiles grins at Scott briefly and gets a thumbs up in return.

Inside the mirror is cool, dry but it almost seems like there’s a current moving air over his hands. Stiles aims as best as he can considering he can’t see his hands and it seems like the image of Derek is rippling.

The magic he sends through envelops Derek right as the other werewolf strikes him full in the chest.

Stiles feels the pain of her foot entering his chest and screams. He barely feels Scott pulling him from the mirror, too busy losing consciousness. He thinks, though, that he can hear Derek echoing his cry of pain.

~ * ~

Kali throws Derek aside as soon as she pulls her foot from his chest. Derek rolls to the wall and lies still. He wants to get up, to help Kira and Patricia fight, but he can’t move. It’s like he’s unconscious everywhere except his mind. He wonders where the blue light came from. It felt like magic—felt like home if he wants to be honest, but he’s not sure he’s ready for that.

It seemed to come from the portal which makes him think of Stiles. Spark Stiles who probably would have seen Derek in trouble and tried to help. And maybe that’s why he can’t move.

Stiles gave him magic and took something back. His injury? No, Derek can feel it bleeding, healing slowly. But he can’t _feel_ it.

Stiles took the pain. And now he’s either dead or unconscious.

Kira grunts as her body hits the ground, and Derek can see where Kali tore her chest open. Kitsunes heal almost as fast as werewolves. Since he doesn’t see any heart or lung tissue, Derek chooses to believe that Kira will be okay as long as someone (he) gets Kali away from her.

He can almost move his toes again.

Patricia roars in pain and the ground shakes when she falls. Kali’s feet appear in the corner of Derek’s vision, nails wickedly long even if they aren’t the claws she’s been using. Her toes are bloodied, menacing.

“You are pathetic,” Kali laughs as she kneels next to Derek, her broken leg already healed. She places a hand on his chest, on the wound, and presses down. He winces, expecting it to hurt. Instead, he feels nothing and the numbness in his limbs disappears. Stiles, he thinks. He hopes the spark is okay after taking so much pain.

Where Kali touches turns blue—Stiles’ magic. She recoils with a hiss, burned flesh stinging Derek’s nostrils.

Derek smiles. “Can’t kill me,” he taunts, forcing himself to sit up. He reaches out, grabs her ankle and slices a tendon in her heel. “An alpha-inflicted wound,” he says. “Slow to heal.” Kali hobbles away from him, but he just stands up and follows her. She swats at him, and he catches her arm. Blue flares and she screams as her skin burns away.

The magic feels warm, right, and Derek wonders if it means anything that Stiles gave it to him. He doesn’t have time for this train of thought as Kali is still struggling in his grip despite the fact that most of her arm is gone, ashes on the floor.

He twists her bones and they snap easily.

Then, deliberately, he puts his claws in her throat and tears it out. She gurgles for a few moments before he swipes again and her head joins Jennifer’s on the ground.

It’s over. It’s finally over.

Well, they still have to get through the portal, but there are no more obstacles waiting to fight them.

Derek doesn’t know if he is relieved or not. Right now, he just feels drained.

~ * ~

Stiles wakes up on his bed with Scott hanging over him, poking him in the chest.

“What happened?” Stiles demands, slapping his hand away and sitting up. His head spins, and he groans in pain. But, his chest feels fine aside from a phantom ache. “How’s the fight going? Are they winning?”

“I haven’t been watching,” Scott admits.

“What?!”

“I’ve been kinda busy, Stiles. In case you didn’t realize it, you got hurt from touching the mirror.”

“No, I got hurt because I…” Stiles flails around until the damn book about familiars slips into his hand. He taps a block of text. “I got hurt because I shared a bond with my familiar. What happened to him happened to me, only not really. It just felt like it. I’m perfectly fine.”

Scott shakes his head. “No, you’re not. You don’t smell like yourself. Usually I can scent the magic on you, but I can’t smell anything except human and protection spell and a foreign scent that doesn’t match you.” Scott pauses before adding, “It complements you, though.”

Stiles stares unblinking at him. “Whatever, dude. Let’s just go check on them. Although, I swear if they’ve died—”

“It’s been five minutes,” Scott interrupts. “I don’t think anything that bad could have happened in five minutes.”

Stiles doesn’t bother responding. Obviously Scott knows nothing when it comes to fights to the death. Not that Stiles any experience there either. It’s just, when he hit Derek with the magic he’d gotten a flood of desperation so thick it was stifling. Derek certainly felt like this was the end.

The mirror is inactive again when Stiles climbs onto the stool to peer into it. He curses and slaps the runes. And then recoils when he comes face to face with Derek.

“Stiles,” Derek breathes, hesitant. Stiles grins at him.

“Miss me?” he asks, ignoring the stutter of his heart at seeing the alpha still alive.

“Yes,” Derek answers honestly. Stiles narrows his eyes at that. “I’m glad to see that you are all right,” Derek continues.

“Yeah, well, you know me: can’t keep a good spark down.”

“I don’t though,” Derek says.

“What?”

Derek gestures, frustrated. “I don’t know you,” he says. Ouch, Stiles thinks. “I want to though, but I’m stuck in this shithole. All of us are.”

“‘All of us’?” Stiles narrows his eyes at Derek. “Just how many of you are there?”

“Three dozen, maybe more,” Derek says. “It’s a big compound. Since I don’t know if Jennifer’s wards died with her, it’s safer for us to travel through the portal.”

“That means you’ll be coming out in my bathroom. My apartment is small, dude. I don’t think I can handle thirty-six-plus people in here.”

“Stiles, dumb idea,” Scott says, “but what if you took the mirror outside? Since the runes are in the frame, it should be portable. I mean, obviously it was used before you acquired it.”

“That is genius!” Stiles grabs Scott and plants a kiss on his cheek. Immediately, Scott wipes at it, making puking noises. Stiles turns back to Derek to ask him his thoughts and catches the tail end of a stink-eye aimed at Scott.

It makes him laugh. “Don’t worry, Mr. Sourwolf, we’ll get you out of there.” Then, he eyes Derek’s body, staring at all the bare skin. “Um.” He blushes when he realizes he’s paying particular attention to one part of Derek’s anatomy. “We’ll have clothes?”

“Clothes?” the misshapen body shoves Derek aside. She leans in close, as if studying Stiles’ face. “You will have clothing for all of us?”

“I might not have anything that’ll fit you right away, but I have bedsheets?”

“Better than nothing,” she says. “I’m Particia, by the way, Mr.?”

“Stiles. Just Stiles. Would you like that bedsheet in red or blue, Particia?”

“Stiles, just get us out of here,” Derek interrupts, pushing Particia away. Stiles thinks he hears him mutter, “Particia, Patricia, why?” under his breath too.

“Yeah sure. Just give me a little bit of time. In the meantime, take stock of everyone and let Scott know sizes. I’ll just go call some people to help.” He thinks of the Hales and knows he’s going to call Talia out to help, if he can make the stipulation that Peter doesn’t come too. “Have everyone else come up with a person we can contact so that we can get them home sooner.”

“Okay.” Derek moves closer to the mirror. For one horrified second, Stiles thinks he’s going to touch it, and he opens his mouth to warn him about the spontaneous combustion, but all Derek does is flash his eyes at Stiles and say, “Thank you.”

Stiles waves at him and then goes to find the book on magical enchantments of objects. He needs to find a way to keep the portal open longer. And he has a few phone calls to make. His dad is the first one.

~ * ~

By the time everything is organized (and the bodies have been dragged down to the arena where Derek and Particia throw them on Kate’s murder-pile), a few hours have passed. Scott, Stiles’ friend, keeps reactivating the portal on his side. A few people pass through the bathroom on the other side, and Derek thinks he even sees his mom.

It makes his heart stutter and his palms sweat. Surely she’ll be happy to see him? And if he can get Stiles to recreate what Jennifer did, then he can give her back the alpha power. He doesn’t know if that would fix their relationship, but it would be a giant step in the right direction.

The older man that likes to lean close to the portal to study them keeps saying, “Magic,” in an awed tone. Derek surmises, from his mannerisms that he is Stiles’ father. Which only serves to make Derek more nervous and he hides at the back of the crowd under the guise of checking on healing.

Kira is bouncing around perfectly happy. Even the electrical burns on her palms have healed. Although, when he asks her, she says she’ll definitely be glad to never have to summon another lightning bolt.

“Do you think my parents are going to be called?” she asks. He shrugs.

“I think they’re calling someone for everyone. I don’t know where they are so they may not be here yet.”

“But they’ll come?”

Derek takes in her hopeful expression, her clasped hands, and the sour scent of worry. “Yes, Kira,” he says, trying to make himself believe it too, “your parents will definitely come for you.” He doesn’t know how long she has been here (obviously not as long as he has or her clothes would be in the same state as his), but he hopes that her parents really will be there when they finally make it through the portal.

Derek would try activating it on this side and then climbing through but when he suggested it, Scott held up a burned bath brush that he claimed Stiles touched to the portal. It’s enough of a deterrent to keep him from trying, and he returns to the back of the crowd to pace.

A few more hours later, and all the supernatural creatures are dozing off, the adrenaline of their escape wearing off and leaving them exhausted. Derek hides behind Particia, listening to her sing a lullaby for the child-wendigo.

Just as he’s about to fall asleep himself, Derek hears the portal activate once more. At the rush of excitement that sweeps through the bodies, he scrambles up and marches to the front of the crowd.

The first thing he notices is that what he can see through the portal is definitely not Stiles’ bathroom. Instead, for the first time in months, he can see sky.

“Okay, so you’ll have to hurry,” Stiles is saying, and Derek snaps his attention onto him. “The portal only stays open five minutes at a time, so when Scott says ‘one,’ that means only one more person can make it through safely. We’ve already wasted two minutes. Who’s first?”

Derek points at Particia. “We need someone we can trust on the other side,” he explains. “I do trust Stiles and everyone that Stiles brought in, but I think we’d all be more comfortable with one of us, someone like you, Particia, there to help.”

Particia nods and ducks through the mirror. Stiles reaches out to her and grabs her to pull her through. Because of the shape and size of the portal, it takes Derek pushing from the back and Stiles and Scott pulling from the front to get her through.

Scott says “One,” sharply, and Derek grabs the child-wendigo and throws him through. Then, they wait for thirty seconds before the portal closes. A few seconds after that, Stiles reopens it.

Turns out the group of survivors is forty-five strong, but they move quickly. They can get six people through the portal in a minute, and soon, it’s just Derek and Kira left in the cell.

Kira looks worried, and Derek thinks it’s because she hasn’t seen her parents at all. There are a lot of people moving around, like Stiles and Scott at the portal, and farther back a petite redhead handing out clothing. “Go on,” Derek says, pushing her a little. “I’ll be right behind you.”

Kira swallows hard and leaps through the portal.

“One,” Scott says. Derek glances back wondering if they’ll ever find this place to recover the bodies. Certainly he would like to gather the murdered supernatural creatures’ bodies.

“Derek!” Stiles yells.

Oh yeah, get through the portal before it closes. Derek takes a running jump and tumbles out into late afternoon sunshine. He lands on Stiles, knocking the breath from both of them.

“Hey,” Stiles says once he stops gasping for air. “How are you?”

Derek doesn’t answer. Instead, he buries his face against Stiles’ shoulder, breathing in his scent, sage and thyme and rosemary and dill and under that the sharp peppery scent of magic.

Derek rumbles contentedly, nosing a little at the hallow of Stiles’ throat. Magic sharing is rare amongst sparks, and Derek is honored that Stiles chose him.

After a few seconds, he sits up and tugs Stiles up with him. “I should go check on the others,” he says, and Stiles looks almost disappointed. He wrestles it off his face, but his scent sours.

Derek wonders what he did wrong.

Surely Stiles didn’t expect him to continue scenting him? Sparks and wolves don’t get along well. Even with the magic sharing, it is rare that sparks will stay with a pack, choosing instead to pursue other careers that enable them to be self-reliant.

At least, that is what Derek has come to expect from Deaton.

If he asks Stiles to be his emissary (not that he will be alpha for much longer) and Stiles says yes, he fully expects that Stiles will have as little to do with him as possible.

It’s not a comforting thought for Derek who wants nothing more than to remain here where he knows he’s wanted. Stiles wouldn’t have worked so hard to free him from the arena otherwise.

“I’ll be right back,” he promises lowly. Stiles doesn’t say anything.

Derek finds Kira quickly. She’s standing by the redhead, asking about her parents.

“Noshiko and Ken Yukimura, did they come?”

The redhead consults a clipboard. “They are traveling in with Alpha Satomi Ito’s pack. They will be here in half an hour.” Then she runs off to help Particia with her royal blue bedsheet of a dress.

Kira wilts in relief, and Derek wraps an arm around her shoulders. “See?” he says. “I told you they would come.” She hits him.

“You were lying earlier. You didn’t know for sure that they would be here.” He laughs because she’s right. Because it is okay to laugh now.

Invariably, he finds his eye drawn back to Stiles where he and Scott are doing something to the portal, which really is a mirror.

“You know, he looked incredibly happy when you landed on him,” Kira remarks, too innocently. Derek raises an eyebrow at her. “It wouldn’t be such a bad thing if you gave in to your instincts and kissed him.” She elbows him. “He’s attracted to you too.”

“Yeah, but attraction isn’t a reason to—you know the situation we were in was probably—oh hell. You know what?” Derek marches up to Stiles, ignores the spark’s startled “What?”, grabs his face, and kisses him.

At first, Stiles just stands there, and fearing Kira has misled him, Derek pulls back. But as soon as their mouths part, Stiles rams his face back into Derek’s making their teeth clack. Derek tilts a little to the left and they slot together perfectly.

“So,” Stiles says when they break apart, breathless. “Um, I’m going to need you to do something very important for me.”

“Anything,” Derek promises.

“Good. Put on some pants so I can introduce you to my dad.”

Which reminds Derek about his mother. Oh, God! He’s been parading around naked where his mom can see him. He covers his face to hide his embarrassment.

“Once you’ve got some clothes on, I’ll take you out to your pack’s territory.” Stiles hands him a pair of black sweat pants stretched out in the waist and a striped blue-and-orange shirt that is a little too tight across his chest. “Just so you’re aware, I am going to kill your uncle.”

“What? Why? What did Peter do?”

“Oh, he just accused me of bargaining with your life. And then he attacked me.”

Derek stares horrified at Stiles. “Peter attacked you?” His chest seizes and he flicks out his claws. “Don’t worry about killing him,” he tells Stiles around his fangs. “I’ll do it myself.”

“Now where’s the fun in that?” Stiles winks. “Besides,” he says, sobering, “Peter can’t touch me when I have my protection spell on. That reminds me.” He taps two fingers on the center of Derek’s palm, drawing them upwards with a gentle motion. Blue drips from his fingers.

“Is that the magic you gave me?” Derek asks, awed.

Stiles nods, letting it pool in his own hand. It looks like an iridescent ribbon of energy. “Huh,” Stiles says. “It feels…more.”

“More what?” Derek asks, worried.

Stiles snaps his fingers and red flame dances over his hand.

Derek stares at him silently.

“Yeah,” Stiles says, letting the flame grow until it forms a shape: a large wolf, sitting on its haunches, howling. Derek stares at it unblinking. “Don’t hurt yourself there, buddy,” Stiles says.

“Is that from me?” Derek asks haltingly. “Did I give you some of my power?”

“Looks like it,” Stiles says.

“That is not possible. Alphas take power; they don’t give it away. Not that I’ve ever heard of.”

“So what do you think is the reason?”

Something runs over Derek’s foot and he very resolutely does not let out any sound, much less a startled whine. Stiles laughs anyway as he stoops down to pick up a thin leather bound journal. He opens it to a section entitled ‘Familiars.’

Stiles laughs at the shocked look on Derek’s face. “I’m not a familiar,” he protests.

“No? Then what?”

“A mate,” Derek says, stepping forward and pressing his mouth against Stiles’ again. The book falls from Stiles’ fingers and scuttles away.

“I can believe that,” Stiles says. “I think that’s a better idea. I never liked that book anyway, too pushy.” After another gentle kiss, Stiles pulls back. “Should I take you home now?”

“What if I’m already home?” Derek counters. “I still have to meet your dad anyway.”

“Hmm, that’s right. You’re wearing pants and everything. Be a shame not to use that.”

 

~ Fin ~

**Author's Note:**

>  **Warnings:** Derek has a catheter inserted at one point that he then removes himself.  
>  A few of the characters die by decapitation (a play on canon, “We’re pretty sure you can’t grow back a head”). Violence. Mild language (a few f-bombs, quite tame really).  
> The only character deaths are the baddies.
> 
> Thanks for reading! Let me know if I missed anything major in the tags.
> 
> (Posted [here](http://1989dreamer.tumblr.com/post/161356480590/an-imprecise-science) on [my Tumblr](http://1989dreamer.tumblr.com/) too).


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